


The Crusades

by kazzandra



Series: The Samsara Saga [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Canon, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Crusades, Eventual Smut, Lead up to Canon Events, M/M, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Past Child Abuse, Rebirth, Reincarnation, Romance, Slow Build, Tragedy, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-21 05:52:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 53,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3680394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kazzandra/pseuds/kazzandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time they met, the Wall Cult was the Church of the One True God, and the Trinity were Sina, Rose, and Maria. </p><p>Levi had been a street brat who did whatever he needed to to survive. Of course he had been caught; he never faulted himself for that. Where he had made a mistake wasn't when the shackles were put on, it was when he let the calm, mysterious Eren beguile him into willingly join the Knights of the Crusade and join a war that couldn't exist, against alchemists who could create an army that doesn't feel pain, doesn't stop, and doesn't die. </p><p>A shitty decision, really. He should have regretted it.</p><p>| Hiatus until May 6th |</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> This series is historically inaccurate because it takes place in the canon universe of Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan. It sometimes is factually inaccurate because I'm not researching for it. I hope to update every day, otherwise every other day, so enjoy!

He had a secret thought that they were in purgatory, rather than fighting for a means to bypass it. It would be the sort of universal irony that only God could laugh at, and the only sort that the Church could come up with. _Fight for God and have your sins annulled._ Stay and burn with them, is what they left unsaid.

He knelt at his bedside every night, and it would be pretty to think that he prayed, prettier to think someone listened. Instead he knelt his head and listened to his brothers-in-arms whisper their prayers - the educated ones in Latin, praying their proper prayers that were spoken wide-and-far during mass; the farm-boys and serfs spoke whatever they wanted to God, thanking him, asking things of him, in whatever language they were born into.

He said nothing. He could apologise for the mother and family he had killed earlier that day, when they had razed the heathen village, sacked it. He could, but it felt dry on his tongue for asking some _god_ to forgive something he couldn’t forgive himself for.

They were returning, at least, to pick up another round of recruits, a form of slavery no one dared to call out. In the morning everything reset, the educated men and the piss-poor boys, equals without the differences in their prayers, all donning the same blood-red tunics and the heavy chainmail. They marched, those that had lost their horses on foot, everyone else on more mild-mannered mares. He road a stallion, of course; had taken it after his own mare had been cut down. He road it harder than it tried to ride him, and he had the deep bruises to prove it.

No one spoke, except perhaps the poor boys, who still believed God listened in to their every thought. He shared a look with his friend; friends, it turned out, only qualified if you lived through hell long enough. Try and find companionship and they died before the day was out.

Irony, universal irony that only God could laugh at and only the sort the Church could come up with.

‘Cheer up, Eren,’ his friend said, ‘we won’t get sent back on the front lines until the new recruits are trained.’

That took months, he knew, but that also meant that he would have months to get to know them, to befriend them, even to love them. He didn’t know if he could handle loving anything anymore, just to know that nearly half of all the men in his squadron died before being released.

He’d been at this for seven years. He’s had hundreds of friends die.

It didn’t get easier.

* * *

 

The cells were filthy and he was filthy. The stains underneath his arms and down his back burned on his skin and seared into his mind’s eye. His hands were chaffed raw from the rough iron cuffs, his fingers numb and his elbows in a screaming pain that only stasis can produce. They gave him and the others food but no means to eat it, and still not enough to stop his stomach from curling and growling and eating itself and himself away.

He was sleeping, probably, when the fuck-shit guard came to collect him, because he woke up having fallen in a puddle of someone’s old piss, without enough feeling in his now-free arms to block his face from colliding with it. He cursed, of course, even started to get up to fight back but a boot pressed the back of his skull back into the urine and he had to calm down before he drowned in it.

What a hell of a way to go.

He was dragged up by his arm, and it embarrassed him that the guard was able to manhandle him out of the cell so easily. He was pulled up on his feet, shoved into the wall and given a second to regain his bearings. He tried to wipe the urine off of his face, but it clung to everything, just as everything clung and burned and seared into every pour and clogged it.

‘Get up, we don’t have all day,’ the man said, his voice haggard with whatever vice he took. Levi glared, but they had him locked up in there so long his hair had grown into his eyes and clench to his forehead and he could _feel_ bumps of clogged puss grow and get bigger and dammit, he didn’t need a reflection to tell him that.

He was pushed to hurry, but if he was going to be dragged outside to die, he was going to make it a fucking slow one. He did, sort of, wonder how they were going to do it – hanging? Drawn and quartered? Stoned? Tied up and trampled? Dragged for miles behind a horse?

He had seen it all, hadn’t cared.

He still didn’t care.

Sort of.

At least he would have something to focus on besides the filth that had permeated his very body.

He was dragged up the stairs, too starved for his dead weight to even be that much of a challenge, though once at the landing he did receive a punch to his gut that made him taste blood at the back of his mouth. The man didn’t have anything to say to him – which was sort of nice, considering how mouthy his partner was.

He was led outside to the courtyard, and, with relief, he thought _hanging_.

Except then he was dragged along underneath the veranda and through another set of doors, back inside and he couldn’t help but taste a bit of fear along with the blood because the rest of the means of execution _promised_ pain.

He was fine with pain, it meant he was alive… but something hard seized in his throat, and he couldn’t swallow it. He was led back inside on the other side of the compound. He didn’t know the layout; this wasn’t his city. His city was a few days away over the mountain ridges to the east. He didn’t know the guards, the military branches, the merchants, the underground dealers – he knew _nothing_.

Nothing except he was starved and beaten and filthy and very likely about to be killed.

That wouldn’t stop him from trying to run, though, not when they were so kind to not bother with handcuffs.

He’d rather be cut down, anyway.

The next set of doors opened to what Levi assumed was the mess hall. There were four others already there, sitting, looking just as vile as he knew he did. They were each sitting in front of a large bowl of thick broth and a spoon, and he knew why they hadn’t tried to run, even though none of them had touched the steaming food in front of them.

He was shoved down onto the bench. ‘Don’t eat,’ he was ordered, but fuck that, and fuck him, he picked up a spoon and started to eat the moment the guard thought to take a step away, even if in the next moment the man’s hands had tangled themselves in his hair and pulled so hard he felt like his scalp was going to peel away from his skull.

‘Let him go,’ someone said; obviously someone important because the guard let go and stood straight. Levi, his chin no longer jutting towards the ceiling, looked to see who had spoken and was both surprised and dismayed at seeing a member of the Crusade walking in from the other side of the room, red tunic and all. ‘You can go.’

‘Are you sure-’

The man had raised a hand to rest on the handle of the massive broadsword that was kept at his waist. ‘Yes,’ he said simply, ‘I’m sure.’

There was a quiet sort of confidence in his words; he spoke in a way Levi could respect, because it didn’t try to _demand_ respect. He was sick of hearing people talk though bravado, but this one didn’t seem to want to talk at all. It was refreshing, really.

Still didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try to run. He had thought he was going to be executed. This was so much worse.

The guard left when the Crusader kept a cold, steady gaze on him, prompting him to move his fat ass without speaking. When the guard left through the doors he had dragged Levi through, the Crusader sat down in front of them with a sigh. He leaned forward just enough to place an elbow on the table, and, resting his chin in his palm, he told them, ‘Well, eat.’

The others did, Levi did not.

The Crusader looked at him the same way he looked at the guard, with that quiet sort of expectance, but Levi didn’t budge. ‘Not hungry?’ He was starved, but that wasn’t the point. The Crusader smiled, then, for a second. ‘Impressive.’

It was bait, Levi knew it. He’d be damned if he took it.

But the sound of chewing and slurping and _swallowing_ was agonizing and his stomach was waging a war no king or emperor or wall could withstand. He licked his lips without realising it, and stared at the bowl in front of him and almost keeled over.

‘I won’t think of you any differently,’ the Crusader said, and Levi felt the others glare at him for garnering so much attention from their supposed saviour. ‘Or would it make you feel better if I ordered you not to eat?’

With a glare he picked up the spoon he had dropped and ate each mouthful with a measured spoon and a steady hand, not breaking gazes with the Crusader, who seemed content with watching him.

They finished, and for a moment Levi thought the man across the table from them had fallen asleep with his eyes open. Not one of them dared speak; Levi because he was trying to gage the most likely exit.

Suddenly, a dagger was stabbed into the table in front of him. ‘This is the here and now, I’m afraid,’ the Crusader said, looking at him directly in the eye. Levi glared, but forced himself to settle down.

The man took the dagger out of the wood table put it back into its sheath on his forearm. ‘My name is Eren, and I am here to give you a choice.’

The illusion of choice was more like it.

‘Yes!’ the man beside him said, leaning forward and knocking the bowl askew. It rocked in the silence. ‘Yes, of course!’

Eren sighed, reached over and pressed the bowl’s circular rocking back into the table. ‘Not entirely how it works,’ he said, and retrieved his hand. ‘Tell me, what have you done?’

‘Nothing!’

‘Not how it works,’ Eren repeated.

‘I killed a man,’ the man at the end of the table confessed, hands on the bowl and looking into its emptiness with a dazed expression on his face.

There were other criminals in the compound; a lot more, actually. Levi nearly grumbled when he understood the Crusader’s cryptic message. Of course he knew what they had done, what they were in for. That’s not what he asked.

Not that he was going to say anything.

Eren’s gaze found his (again, Great Sina) and there was a knowing glint in the Crusader's eye, like the bastard had read his mind. It made Levi wish  _he_ had a dagger stowed somewhere. ‘You’re going to hell,’ Eren said, ‘supposedly. The Church would like to offer you a means of annulment, paid for with service.’

‘What did you do?’ Levi asked, because he knew it was the last thing this Eren wanted to hear.

The man looked at him then, levelly. ‘Something I don’t consider a crime,’ he said, ‘but was, and so here I am,’ he raised his hands across his bench. ‘Because I refused to die for something I didn’t consider a sin.’

Levi sinned; he wasn’t in any delusions about that. He stole and murdered and tortured when he had to, but he did it because he had to. Because he was from the slums and there were people better than him that _deserved_ better.

‘If that supposed to make me want to join?’

‘You could have bitten your own tongue,’ the Crusader said, too simply for the context, ‘if you had wanted to die.’

It wasn’t beneath Levi to glower then, but it should have been, because Eren seemed far too amused for Levi’s taste. ‘Of all the prisoners here, you were the ones who exhibited enough discipline to become Knights of the Crusade, that is why you’re here. We don’t need foot soldiers, not now, at least.’

‘You mean slaves.’

Eren’s gaze grew sharp. ‘I envy you, if you’ve been that free to consider this slavery.’

‘I’ll do it,’ the idiot next to him said, almost distressed. ‘However long, I’ll do it.’

‘I know,’ Eren said, and it made Levi want to punch his pretty face into the ground. ‘You all are, otherwise there is a mob outside waiting for an afternoon execution.’ He stood then, subtly checked that all of the bowls were empty, starting with Levi’s. ‘Follow me.’ Eren turned directly him, then. ‘I’d wait, by the way.’

In his head, Levi cursed him with every derogatory word in every language he knew. He started with _bastard_.

They were led outside, but still within the barracks, to where troves of rainwater for the horses were, still and in the warm weather, breeding. ‘This is the best you’ll get until we reach the Holy Lands,’ he explained, before sitting on a stool usually reserved for when the smith needed to nail new horseshoes on.

‘Well,’ he told them when they didn’t move, ‘strip.’

Levi was the first to grasp the edges of his shirt and pull it over his head. They weren’t given a cloth, or anything like that, but he’d be damned if he had to bathe with water that the others had touched. He dunked his head in before the others could get out of their shirts, and scraped his fingers so viciously through his hair he swore grains of dirt had come loose and he was bleeding.

He threw his shirt in next, tried to rub some of the filth out, even if just a little, and used it to scrub his skin until it was red raw, and he continued. The others followed suit, though they didn’t pause like Levi did when it came to removing his trousers. He did it, still, because he wasn’t about to fester for the sake of decency.

He stopped when the Crusader appeared in front of him, holding one of the brushes used to pat down the horses. ‘I find this works best,’ he said, and Levi didn’t like the preferential treatment at all, ‘if you want to skin yourself, I mean.’

Levi glared, but took it anyway, dumped in underwater, and rubbed his hand through until he could feel scrapes in his palm and he was sure he had released as much horse hair and dirt from it as he could, and then proceeded to scrape away the dirt that the cloth had missed, and the dirt that his shirt had put on, at least in his mind, and then again through his hair, and he brushed his forehead until it bled.

‘That’s enough,’ Eren said, eventually, not giving Levi enough time to even try to beat out the sweat from his clothes. ‘Leave your clothes,’ he said, and walked back inside like he expected nothing less than their absolute obedience.

Levi considered running, but then the Crusader’s damn words echoed in his head _I’d wait_ , and the repeated information about the mob outside, presumably mixed in with other Crusaders – the damn fucks never travelled _alone_ , not that he knew of.

They weren’t going to kill him, just yet, and the implication of clean clothes was too good to pass up, so he followed, cupping everything that mattered, and because he followed the others did as well. They didn’t go back to the hall, instead through to the west to deserted barracks. It looked like half of it was filled with long term occupants, but there was evidence that this was where the Crusaders were staying, as well, for the time being.

Eren gestured a large linen bag on one of the beds. ‘Help yourselves,’ he told them, ‘get some sleep. The Bishop will be here in the morning.’ He sat down, and thought for a moment. ‘Don’t forget to wear the pendants, they should be in there too.’

They dressed, they fought, a little, though they were all too weak from starvation to do much about it. But they dressed, and after they dressed it turned out there was nothing for them to do but to choose a free bed and to sleep in it. Eren stayed away, watching them like a hawk, until a hoard of Crusaders arrived, eleven of them, twelve including Eren. One sat down next to him and talked to Eren about the market, and tossed him a pomegranate before moving to sit on the seat beside him.

Levi couldn’t understand them after that; they were speaking a guttural, northern language. That didn’t stop him from glaring, though, and it didn’t prompt him to talk to the others. He settled on waiting, and while he was waiting he fell asleep, finally prone, and woke up well before dawn and far after the last lights were put out.

He couldn’t explain why his heart had started to run away with him, but he woke up because it was hammering in his chest so hard he swore he was going to die, right then and there. And what a shitty way to go. He pressed his hand against his chest, finding it even a little hard to breathe, but he had to get out of there, had to, because it wasn’t in him to die for someone else’s cause.

He took care to breathe through his nose, and, quietly, sat up and looked around him. Everyone seemed to be asleep, but that didn’t mean there weren’t guards. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to take a door, not, he thought, looking at the windows that let in the moonlight, when there were other options.

He slowly, carefully moved out of bed. The stone floor had frozen with the dying sun, and it shot something uncomfortable straight up Levi’s spine. He waited, swore his heart was going to either give out or give him away, but it did neither, so he stepped forward. He knew where Eren was, and made sure to take the furthest possible route around his bunk to the furthest window. There were still plenty of empty beds, but whatever was occupied by belongings before was now occupied by breathing, snoring, farting bodies.

Climbing to the windowsill was harder; to do it easily would require some sort of aid. He could try to run up it, but not without the risk of making noise if he were to fall. He pressed a hand against his heart, trying to calm it because damn it, this was getting ridiculous. His palm dug in to the pendent they had all put on, the strange jutting symbol of the Church of the One God. He was tempted to take it off, but didn’t chance it, and ran at the wall and clung to the ledge with all his might until his weight steadied and he could pull himself up to rest on the few inches of a ledge.

The window opened, thankfully, even if it was restricted to a span of a foot before the iron rod that prevented the wind from shattering it reached the end of it’s stretch.

It was a pain in the ass to be as small as he was – people automatically thought they could take him, could own him, could _beat_ him, but it was also a blessing in the most inopportune times. He couldn’t imagine any of the others being able to slip through the gap between the window frame and the stone wall, but he could.

And he was free.

The drop was a bit too far down to just jump, not without the fear of potentially breaking his legs and rendering himself useless for both escape and for service. So, turning in the little space the ledge allowed, he lowered his legs, his feet trying to find purchase, but not finding anything concrete. He slipped lower, so that stone was rammed underneath his armpits, and finally found a gap between the stone large enough for his naked toes to grasp on to with enough assurance that he could lower himself, one hand still on the ledge, the other wildly grasping at every crack he could, jabbing his fingertips in whatever hole he could before he found one half way down that his fingers could grip.

Lowering himself further was one of the most frightening things he had done, but along with the fear came the adrenaline, and, for whatever reason, he found a smile threatening to overtake his face.

He fell looking for the next purchase to cling to, and his legs nearly snapped when he hit the ground hard, so hard that even falling on his back after his legs gave out winded him.

He could hear a roar in his ears – his heart, he knew, and god was it loud. Loud enough to drive him insane, at least, if he wasn’t so preoccupied with the fact that he _wasn’t breathing_. It was burning him from the inside, burning him up with the fuel of fear and aggravation at not being able to drag air in. When it finally came, that breath, it felt sweeter than anything he had ever felt before, it reinvigorated his limbs and _holy shit I’m alive_.

That is, until hands grabbed his shirt and hauled him to his feet and slammed him into the wall, and knocked his breath out all over again.

‘You _idiot!_ ’ Eren swore, his voice irresponsibly loud. He let Levi slide down the wall until his feet were on the ground, and pressed against his chest again.

‘Get,’ Levi said, gasping for more air, wanting nothing more at that moment for it to come _back_. ‘Get off!’

‘When I said wait,’ Eren continued, not heeding anything Levi was saying (or doing, like dying, it seemed) ‘I _didn’t_ mean to jump out the goddamn window! You fucking…’ he nearly through Levi to the side – great, the fucker had _strength_ underneath that frame of his.

‘Fuck you,’ Levi said, doubled over, his hands on his knees and waiting for his lungs to stop stabbing him every time he took in a breath. His joints creaked like old hinges, and everything _hurt_. ‘Fuck you, asshole, shit,’ he pressed a forearm over his ribs, trying to keep them straight.

Eren was glaring, eyes lit with a fire that Levi had yet to see. It gave him a second life, a reckless ferocity that Levi wasn’t prepared to deal with right now.

‘I’m not going to,’ Levi gasped, _fuck_ , ‘I’d rather die.’

‘You will die,’ Eren agreed, and walked towards him, shadowing the moon, and pulled Levi up by the scruff of his shirt.

Levi was tempted to kick at Eren’s shins, or something more precious, and make a break for it. But he knew when he was outmatched. He might have, he _would_ have, brawled it out. He was good at fighting, terrifyingly so, but he had been starved for nearly a month now, had been confined and forced to sit in a filthy cell _for a month_ , and honestly… he was weak, and tired, and he wasn’t in the mood to have either fact thrown back into his face.

 _Again_.

‘Deserters are hunted,’ Eren told him, like he was an idiot that didn’t know. He hadn’t even _joined_ yet. ‘It won’t be like what your used to, because they weren’t _hunting_ you. And when they hunt you, they don’t just hunt you, they hunt _everyone_ close to you.’

‘Then why don’t you kill them and let me go?’

Eren dropped him.

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘Really?’ Levi said, spitting. ‘Coward.’

‘The _smart_ thing to do is to go missing during battle.’

Levi, acting haughtier than he felt, nearly laughed. ‘Good plan.’

Eren’s gaze grew cold again, that fire disappearing and if Levi’s knees didn’t feel as brittle as they did, he might have chanced it and took off, right then and there. He wasn’t used to being this weak. He didn’t _like_ being this week.

Then Eren sagged, becoming less frightening and more wounded, and Levi _really_ wished his knees didn’t feel like they would shatter upon impact because this was the _perfect_ time to run.

‘How old are you?’

‘What?’

‘You’re age, how many?’

Levi sneered. ‘None of your business.’

Eren smiled, to himself, to the moon, to who the fuck cares. ‘You’re young.’

Levi didn’t like being told that, because he considered himself quite old given how many more years he figured he had before he either died or got himself killed. ‘And how old are you?’

’36,’ Eren said, and then looked to Levi expectantly.

He couldn’t look at the Crusader, so he looked to the stone walls surrounding the compound he hadn’t taken into account. ’17.’

‘You’re not lying, are you?’

Levi crossed his arms. ‘Take it or leave it, I don’t care.’

Eren sighed, and Levi couldn’t believe this old man was the same one that had thrown him against the wall not moments later. Eren walked a few paces, sat down against the building, and looked up at the sky. ‘Sit.’

‘Hell no.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Elizabeth.’

Eren chuckled at that. ‘Well then, my lady, please, if you would sit,’ and he flourished his hand over the ground next to him.

‘Fuck you.’

Eren’s face changed, becoming strange with some thought Levi couldn’t decipher. ‘Funny,’ he said, and then leaned his head to the left. ‘The gate is that way, but you’ll find you’ll have to fight your way through. No one is going to slack off the night before the Bishop comes.’

Levi considered it. Knew he would lost; actually liked his head.

‘I’m been a Crusader for seven years,’ he said, dragging his knees in. ‘If you don’t think every single one of us has gone through every viable means of escape, you’re dumber than you look.’

Levi glared, and Eren laughed.

‘I’m kidding. If it was you, I’d imagine you’d actually be able to do it.’

Just like how he had baited Levi in the hall, he was doing it here, too. ‘You mean escape,’ this time, Levi couldn’t see the harm in taking it. Standing was painful, too, so when he sat down he made sure to do in across from Eren, on the other side, against he outer wall. Eren looked amused at his rebellion.

‘Escape, yes.’

‘I could do it now, if you weren’t here.’

Eren smiled and looked down to his lap, where his hands were folded. ‘And I’d let you, if I didn’t think you’re head would be propped up on a spike by morning.’

‘So this is you what, looking out for me?’

‘Yes,’ Eren said. He said things too simply for Levi’s liking. It gave the insinuation that he was just as he said, just as he came across, and Levi didn’t believe it for a minute.

‘Why?’

The smile faded. ‘Would you believe me if I said you remind me of myself?’

‘Bullshit.’

‘When I was younger, I guess,’ Eren continued.

Levi pondered, tried to imagine Eren smaller in frame and thinner, with his ears a little larger and his face free of those off-hand scars, the burgeoning wrinkles. He scraped the calm demeanour the man had and looked instead at the fire he had seen when Eren had thrown him against the wall, and still couldn’t see it.

‘You’re so full of shit it’s coming out of your mouth,’ Levi said, and the unexpectedness of it made Eren burst out laughing.

Fear bloomed first, before he remembered he wasn’t out here by himself, _escaping_ , not anymore. Now he was being chaperoned by Mr Big-Wig himself, and Eren could probably do whatever he wanted.

‘What did you do?’ Levi found himself asking, before, really, he realized he cared for the answer. 

‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t play dumb with me,’ Levi said, growling, ‘shithead. You know what I mean.’

Levi played with the thought that, if their ages were reversed, he might have been able to get a rise out of him. Eren only looked amused, and it was patronising as all hell.

‘You’re not supposed to ask that question in the Crusaders.’

‘I’m not a Crusader.’

‘Not yet,’ Eren reminded him. ‘What did you do?’

‘What didn’t I do?’

‘Oh,’ Eren said, ‘aren’t you a... big tough guy.’ If that wasn’t a slight on his height, Levi didn’t know what was. Levi glared, stood, walked over with every intention to kick the bastard right in his smug fucking face, only to have Eren sweep his long as fucking legs out and trip Levi right over so that instead of kicking Eren in the face, he was falling into his arms, and he fell hard.

‘That didn’t go the way I expected it to,’ Eren said, wheezing, and shoved Levi right off and back into the dirt. ‘You’re a bony little bastard.’

Levi kicked him, aiming for Eren’s knee, but the bitch didn’t react when his toes collided because, hey, he was barefoot and fuck all of this. Levi was done. He stood, trying his best not to pout, and walked off. He found Eren next to him, and then slightly behind him when Levi shot him the worst glare he could muster. He walked in the wrong direction on purpose several times, because when he did Eren would have to run a little and cut him off, and inconveniencing the older man made Levi vindictively happy in his own weakness, at least of the time being. He would get Eren back, he’d beat his face into the dirt and _then_ they would see who got away.

The guy who was standing (sitting, the lazy shit) guard in front of the barracks looked, strangely enough, scandalized when Levi walked past him. But he was curious when Eren didn’t immediately follow him in. ‘He needed a piss.’

‘Right.’

‘Just a piss,’ Eren said. It sounded pleasant, but there was something so dark and vile underneath the words that Levi felt his skin crawl. How the hell did he _do_ that? He shook himself, and marched himself back to where he had slept before. Eren went back to his bunk.

Levi couldn’t sleep.

And, honestly, neither could Eren.

 

 


	2. The Bishop

He made it a habit to wake up before everyone else, because unlike them his morning wood was sacrilege. If they had been the same men from seven years ago, if he wasn’t the only survivor from those times, he knew it would be laughed at or ignored just as it was for everyone else. But of course not. He outlasted commanders; he watched people come and die more often than there were weeks in a year.

He was the Crusader whose sin everyone knew because someone always managed to survive long enough to pass it through word of mouth. The prejudice would then live on for another few months until it could be bred again in the next wave of recruits, until they died too.

He looked at it, was almost angry at it, and stepped out of his bed and stood. He froze when he felt it, that faint prickling at the nape of his neck that raised the hairs on his arms. It only happened when he saw something he didn’t immediately register, and in the mornings that unfortunately happened a lot.

He was getting old. Not many soldiers, not many _men_ lived past forty. Eren turned his head, and found himself staring in the bruised eyes of Levi. The boy hadn’t slept, it seemed like, because the bruises were black and the fat underneath his eyebrows was heavy and swollen. It was too early, though, and now that he had an audience he couldn’t get rid of his problem the way he wanted to. Instead, he reached for the chainmail, knowing it would be heavy enough to hide the evidence until he could steal himself a minute to pound it out.

He couldn’t remember the dream too clearly; he had been ridden sore from the journey and slept like the dead, it seemed. He had a feeling he didn’t _want_ to know.

‘Piss off,’ Eren said. Levi’s glare became a flat scowl. Eren yawned and ran a hand over his face, blinking the tired tears away. ‘Sorry,’ he amended, ‘good morning.’

It was awkward, and he could feel his ears burn. He tried his best to hide the bulge in his trousers with his forearm. The last thing he needed was some kid looking at it. He reached underneath his bed, to drag the folded chainmail out and up, over his calf and knee.

‘So you’ve got an erection,’ Levi said, and Eren could feel himself visible flinch. ‘You wear red, not white, dumbass.’

It was almost funny. He left the chainmail on his lap, and in habit his forefinger found his brow. How to explain, what to explain – what to say at all, really. In lieu of an explanation he flourishes his wrist, acknowledging the statement and nothing more, and pulled the chainmail before the boy could say anything more about the male body’s biological functions.

‘Aren’t you going to take care of it?’

‘We’re not all lucky,’ Eren said, but it was painful, ‘to be as young as you are.’

‘Bullshit. If you’re old enough to get it up you’re old enough to run the full mile. What, are Crusaders celibate?’ Levi repositioned himself, so that he was sitting. He looked down, almost in surprise. ‘I’m at half-mast myself. You don’t see me trying to protect your virtue,’ he yawned. ‘Or whatever.’

 _But it’s not the same_.

‘You’re free to do as you like,’ Eren said, instead.

‘Seriously,’ Levi continued, annoyingly in a better mood despite being in such bad shape. ‘If Crusaders aren’t allowed to beat it, I’m walking out of here and hanging myself.’ And _then_ the irritation began to leak in. ‘Would you fucking talk?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Just go, everyone here’s had their first bleed, Great Sina.’

Eren’s lungs felt weak, he felt shy. He was ridiculous. ‘Right.’

Levi was getting annoyed, he could see it; he was far more apparent now than he was yesterday. Yesterday he was all haughty arrogance; he was a mask to hide the fact that he was powerless. At the moment, at least.

‘Look,’ Levi said, as he shoved his hand down his trousers. ‘I’ll do it myself.’

 _No_.

Their bunks were close, only a few paces apart, so when the blind panic raced through Eren’s veins and up into the bile in his stomach, he only had a few steps to take to reach Levi and rip the boy’s arm out from his trousers.

‘What the hell?’

‘Not in front of me,’ Eren said, trying to pour authority into his tone, and fearing that it came out pitched. Levi’s face twisted, confused and disgusted.

‘You’re telling me we all have to go off to our own private fucking corners–’

‘Just,’ Eren held up a hand, tried to keep his voice steady. ‘Not in front of me.’ Levi was quiet, for a moment, and Eren was hit with the sudden and violent urge to smother him with his pillow, but held it back. ‘It rained this morning; if you want fresh water to bathe with, go now. I won’t say anything.’

‘So you didn’t sleep either, huh?’ He was too pleased with his assessment.

Eren straightened, ramrod straight. ‘No,’ he said tersely. ‘Excuse me.’

He couldn’t hear what Levi had to say next, he wouldn’t. He left, and found solace in the cold air outside. The sun had yet to peak past the mountain ridges, but it was bright. Too bright to do anything outside, but One God, he was tempted.

He tried to keep his vision’s face neutral – tried, even, to remember to seven years ago. The emerging memories became a body, turning to black ash as fire ate from his toes upwards. It helped, in its own sick, twisted way. It was painful, but it was deserved.

He had nothing left to cry, but he did sink to the ground. Everything was empty. Everything was empty seven years ago and, impossibly, he kept losing a little something more each time someone else died. And they were always friends. It didn’t matter how little he knew them.

Levi was so much like how Eren used to be, it almost hurt. He didn’t know how he could stand it if he trained the boy, and watched him die. He didn’t even know if he could stand him being around in the first place.

The best, and worst, course of action would be to run him through. No one would fault him for it. No one would extend his years of servitude. Levi was a criminal – filth to society. What did it matter if he saw himself in kid, angry with the system, with the Church, with the _way things worked_ – with _the way people were_.

Angry, protective, not caring about his well being, and throwing himself into disobedience and fights, all for the sake of someone else. Someone who _refused to fight back_.

He could see himself in Levi, in the boy’s tenacity, in his audacity. The crudeness and bluntness were new, though. But with the Bishop coming later that morning there was no chance of escape for Levi. No chance for any of them. Levi was just a nameless boy from the town over the ridge, who had been arrested for stealing but convicted for _illicit activities_ (that awful umbrella term Eren had long since replaced with the word _surviving_ ). He was doomed for the Crusades.

And Eren couldn’t do a thing about it. Nothing productive, at least. He could provide Levi with an early demise. But if he really was a younger Eren, with that same spirit, that same energy, surely he had a chance at surviving the ten-year indenture?

Praise to the Three, he hoped so. 

* * *

Levi had a better time at cleaning himself this time around. The water was fresher, colder, and it soothed the heat that had burned in with the dirt. He felt clean, using the brush from last time. Though unlike last time there weren’t three other men eager to contaminate the water with their dirt and oil. It was practically glorious.

He bled, which was a pity, but he pat water on the cuts until they cleared, and pinched at the skin (with fingers that were pink they were so raw). He examined the tiny abrasions, and determined he had created them with the stiff bristles of the brush, rather than reopen some long-festering wound. He even had time to wait for the water droplets to fall off of his skin, for the cold morning air to dry him. He put on his new clothes and he felt fresh for the first time in a month.

His stomach wasn’t growling, he felt clean, the ait was sweet, and if he wasn’t aware of how sleep deprived he was (bordering on delirious, it was _great_ ), he would wilfully admit that being a Crusader wasn’t such a bad idea.

Except, living where he lived, he wasn’t an idiot. It was common knowledge that the reason the Crusaders were so well known throughout the western world _wasn’t_ because of how successful their campaigns were. It was because of how often they had to come by to recruit.

Their body count was only a rumour, but Levi believed in it. Believed in that horrifying percentage, because the persistence for the goal of recapturing their _Holy Lands_ had staggered into disbelief. Who (or _what_ , everyone said) was so strong to decimate army after army of the Great Church? Who could hold off for so long, and, though it wasn’t said _aloud_ , who _won_?

Levi didn’t want to find out. He fought so that he could win.

He would run now. He _should_ run now. He should head north and wait until he grew old enough for facial hair; grow it wild. No one would recognise him, no one would think to _hunt_ him. He could get away with it. He could be Arcite; better, even, because he didn’t have a cousin to cheat or a woman to fuck things up over.

He thought of Eren. He didn’t know why. But he did, and as he did, he walked back into the compound and snuck back inside his bed. He didn’t know how he felt at seeing Eren’s bunk empty, but he put it aside the moment his head hit the pillow, because he finally found sleep.

And was kicked. He swore, found himself tangled in his sheets, found he couldn’t break free, found he was falling to the floor to a chorus of rude laughter. And damn, if he had been in a good mood before because of sleep depravation, he was now officially in the worst mood because of sleep _interruptions_.

He could kill them all with a dull knife; he could. He _would_.

The one who kicked him had been the zealous volunteer. ‘Get up! Enough with this preferential bullshit, and _get up_!’

‘Preferential _kiss my ass_ ,’ Levi growled, his head pounding painfully and his legs still caught up in the sheets. He kicked them away, would have jumped back up and slugged the guy something new, it the ground didn’t feel just _so_ damn comfortable.

The other one, the one who hadn’t spoken yesterday, sat on his bed. ‘Food is worth it,’ he said. His voice was the soft, kind-hearted bullshit that Levi wasn’t expecting of someone who had been brought in screaming his ugly mug off. ‘Food is always worth it.’

‘Preach to the choir, asshole,’ but he found his feet anyway, and even though the world spun on it’s axis a good 17º, he remained on his feet. ‘Fuck the Trinity.’ Fuck that sun, streaming in through the windows in long slants. Fuck that especially.

‘They already let us sleep in longer than anyone else!’ Ah, a voice of reason.

‘Are you some kind of ingrate,’ the kicker said, grinding his teeth. ‘I won’t burn, you hear? I’m _living_.’

Levi didn’t feel like _deigning_ his majesty with every reason why the Crusades weren’t so much a second chance as they were a delayed execution. Stones, one might say, to try to hit one bird. If only someone could _aim._

He hated false hope. He hated people who believed in it. Dammit, _why_ hadn’t he just run? He could have, Great Sina, Eren probably _meant_ for him to…

He shook his head. Too late now. He should be used to that, at least; he never had any milk to cry over. He covered a yawn and scratched at his chest. Something felt wrong when he did it, and in a blind pendulum he searched for the pendent. He groped himself, but when he dug his nail into his neck and found no leather string, he gave up. He must have left it in the stables.

 _Fantastic_ morning.

He gave up, yawned again, and figured there was more spilt milk than he initially thought. The others didn’t know what to do, really, but they were tense and ready for it, each in his own unique stance. The little shit that had kicked him out of bed was standing military straight, right deep in his spine. The screamer, the unexpected voice of reason, sat on Levi’s bed with his hands enclosed together and pressed the skin until it was white underneath the pressure and red everywhere else. The murderer was still on the bunk he had claimed last night, staring at his hands, looking just that little bit lost.

He had a sinking feeling these were going to be the sort of assholes he was going to die next to, and that, more than anything so far in this debilitating, horrendous morning, pissed him off the most. He considered kicking the zealous recruit in the back of the head, as payback.

The doors opened.

* * *

When the Bishop arrived every Crusader in their brigade had to stand in a row, shoulder to shoulder, backs straight, hands on their swords, chin’s tilted down. Eren’s neck had begun to develop a crick, waiting for the Bishop’s carriage to arrive at the gate, but he didn’t dare move to stretch it out. Not when a Bishop was involved.

Thomas was getting antsy in the heat, in their armour. He wasn’t usually so bad, aside from having the genetics that caused him to sweat like a pig in sweltering weather. This humidity wasn’t as murderous as it was in the Holy Lands, but the sun was beating on their backs and for propriety’s sake they had to wear their helmets.

‘I’m going to faint,’ Thomas said, a statement more than a warning, ‘I swear, I’m going to faint.’

Eren would have had something to say, some soothing remark – he hadn’t eaten the pomegranate that Thomas had given him from the market yesterday, think of that as a reward. Something stupid like that. Something meaningless. He had already eaten that pomegranate, though, so probably something that was a lie, too.

But the gates opened and the elaborately painted carriage, with its rich base of purple and it’s sequestered golden ivy, stolen from the palaces to the Far East, arrived, and the driver opened the door. The Bishop must have dressed to match his carriage, because his regal robes were violet and the embroidery was stitched gold ivy that wrapped around the tunic so tightly it looked feral.

Thomas’ spine lifted – that slight difference between good posture and forced respect. The little squire boys that had been riding on the back (haggard and girlish, it was almost ironic) jumped off and brought with them a train of carpet they rolled out in front of the carriage, so that his holiness’ feet didn’t fester with dirt.

The Bishop deigned the ground permissible, and stepped out from his plush cushions and onto the blue carpet.

Eren felt his stomach fall to his feet.

It wasn’t a _Bishop_. Or, more specifically, it wasn’t just _any_ Bishop. It was one of the Grand Bishops of Sina, second only to the Paladin, or the Pope, depending on which area of the world you were from. It was the man who burned…

It was the man who forced his servitude. The man who placed a twenty-year chain around Eren’s neck and told him to be happy for it, for their God will save them and the Trinity shall carry out His work.

He had to force himself to not grip the handle tighter, had to force himself to not slice the man in half. He was an old man, yes, wrinkled and white, with dark, cold eyes that must have never seen compassion in human flesh, must have been blind to it.

He walked slowly, gnarled and proud, walking over all the lives he enlisted, their futures and their pasts. He walked with the lightness of a deluded hero, one whom the world carried on its shoulders; one who never lost sleep at night for his decisions. His steps were small, his gait measured. It felt like a lifetime before the… _man_ entered the keep and they were allowed to follow him in.

‘What is it?’ Thomas asked quietly when they repositioned themselves in rows of two in order to follow the Grand Bishop to the Hall.

Eren’s throat closed up, so he shook his head and marched forward before Thomas could do anything stupid, like ask again.

They reconfigured in the hall, usually reserved for eating, but they had cleared it of the tables and set up a grand seat for the Grand Bishop before his arrival. The man continued his sloth-like pace, but thankfully didn’t need the fanfare of another hall runner set out before him. He took his seat before the squires returned to lay the carpet from before back down in front of him.

The man leaned and made himself comfortable. He smiled and his papery skin pulled with it in a disastrously monstrous way. ‘Not many left this year, are there?’ No one spoke. ‘Well, speak up,’ he commanded, ‘I don’t talk for the pleasure of hearing my own voice.’

Funny.

‘No, sir,’ their commander said; he had only been promoted a month ago, when the previous commander fell in battle. ‘Most of us fell.’

‘Excellent,’ the Bishop said, and clapped his hands together. ‘You’d be in need of some new recruits then, I’d take it.’

‘We found four that fit the¾’

‘No,’ the man said, waving the commander’s words away. ‘No, you’ll need more than that. Don’t want you lot returning from the front lines too soon. Take twenty.’

Eren was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable. He knew the others were, too. The Knights of the Crusade were the _Knights_ of the Crusade for a very particular reason; they were talented. Their recruits showed the aptitude for it. They were _bred_ to fight.

No one else in the prison showed that. They were cut-throats, drunks, piss-poor thieves. There was no point in training people so undisciplined because they would surely die within a week, much less months.

He could see, from the corner of his eye, all of these facts hitting the commander, right where it hurt. ‘Yes,’ the commander said, defeated, ‘Yes of course, sir.’

‘My Holiness,’ the Bishop drawled, spinning his wrist around lazily. ‘Yes, _My Holiness_.’

‘Yes,’ the commander amended, ‘ _Your Holiness_.’

‘Commander,’ the Bishop said, his voice light, ‘this is when you provide me with your best and brightest options.’

He seemed so… menial, sitting there, bored. It was almost hard to reconcile this man with the one who screamed his sermons and praised his One God and worshipped the Trinity with perversion. If Eren had not had his face seared into his memory, it would be inconceivable that this paper-thin man was the same zealot who burned…

Who burned his lover at the stake and watched for hours in rapture. Made Eren watch for hours in horror. Who threw him in a cell and starved him and beat him and broke up and cursed him to the front lines of the most unholy war in the so-called _Holy Lands._

‘If you’d excuse me, Your Holiness,’ the commander said, but the Bishop wasn’t looking at their leader, he was looking at Eren.

‘You,’ he called, lifting a wrist and a finger to gesture to Eren. ‘You do it. Bring sixteen others with you. I want you to choose them.’

So he did remember.

‘I’d chose the ugly ones,’ the Bishop continued, smiling. ‘The best form of abstinence from temptation, given your sin.’ He leaned forward. ‘As a service to our One God, I would be honoured to purge you of any unexpected… enticements.’

Great Sina, Eren was going to run him through.

‘Yes, Your Holiness,’ he said, stepping out of the row to stand on the plush runner. He bent down on one knee, and gave the Bishop his service, while plotting a tortuous demise in his head. Halfway through, he was reacquainted with the image of charred flesh, could still feel the taste at the back of the mouth, of that black air.

‘Dismissed.’

He stood, turned on his heel, and walked out. 

* * *

Levi couldn’t even find himself surprised when Eren walked in, he really couldn’t. What he did find surprising was that the calm confidence he had seen in Eren (respected, in his own way) was gone, and instead his face was ashen white when he removed the helmet.

‘Get up,’ he said, but his voice was gruff, ‘get the fuck up, now.’

Levi scowled, but did as he was told. Eren lead them with a speed that Levi’s legs weren’t comfortable with, around the wrong side of the building to get to the Mess Hall, when another Crusader intercepted them.

‘ _What_ ,’ Eren said, his voice sharp and made his comrade hesitate. ‘What now?’

‘I-‘ And Levi recognized him as the man who had given Eren the pomegranate from the day before. ‘He wants to see our choices, first.’ He looked over to the four of them, eyes lingering on Levi for who the fuck knew why. Levi wasn’t in the mood to be ogled; if the man had any sense he’d stop before his nose was a black and blue indent. ‘His orders are to take them directly to him.’

‘Fine,’ Eren said, or growled, and placed the helmet back on his head. It instilled superiority and Levi didn’t even need to be told to follow Eren as they doubled back towards the Mess Hall from yesterday. They crossed a corner, Levi cut through it, and accidentally placed himself right beside Eren. The change in formation caught the Crusader’s attention, and the next thing Levi knew was that he had been shoved, once _again_ , into the wall.

‘Where is the pendant?’ Eren demanded, eyes searching the upper part of Levi’s chest fruitlessly. ‘You were wearing it before where _is it_?’

This tension was different than what he had seen of Eren yesterday. It was panicked, _fearful_. It held the same sort of taste in the air as it did when Levi’s mother had pushed him out of their burning home to run and find his baby sister.

‘Probably by the stables. I forgot to put it back on.’

Eren mouthed the end of his sentence, stepped away. The expression on his face made all three of the other recruit’s to step back. ‘Fine,’ Eren said, ‘ _Fine!_ ’ He turned back around and pulled off his own pendant. ‘Put this on,’ he said.

‘Eren,’ the other Crusader said, a warning in his voice.

‘He might not notice.’

‘Is he…?’ But the other Crusader didn’t finish. ‘Here, have mine,’ he said instead, and gave Eren his own pendant. ‘The stables, right?’ He didn’t even bother finishing his question before he began to hurry down the hall.

‘Thomas!’

But this Thomas had left.

What was the big fucking deal?

Eren put the pendant on and turned to Levi. ‘ _Now_ ,’ and before Levi could even consider disobeying, the necklace was over his head and around his throat. It made an excellent collar.

Piss perfect.

They continued down until they reached the Mess Hall, only this time there were two boys in matching uniforms, waiting for their arrival. Upon seeing Eren they hastened to push the double wooden doors open.

There was a dark blue carpet rolled out on the ground and all of the tables were missing. Their replacement, however, was not to Levi’s liking.

He always had a problem with old men. They seemed to throw morality out the window with their old age and lived with a sense of superiority that only a lack of a future could give a person. This man was older than he had ever seen.

‘The Grand Bishop Reiss,’ Eren introduced, earning a callous smile from the corpse in its chair, ‘Father to the Children of Sina.’

Second only, Eren left unsaid, to the Paladin. What the fuck was _he_ doing here?

Fucking great. What did Levi do to deserve shit like this so early in the morning? It was worse when Eren stepped aside, back into the row with his brothers and left them stranded in the middle of the hall.

Levi glared at him. _Traitor_.

But Eren wasn’t looking at him; he was looking straight ahead. From where Levi stood he could only see the white of Eren’s eyes – all of the Crusader’s attention was on the Bishop.

It pissed him off, if he was going to be honest with himself.

‘Ah,’ the Bishop said, cooing at them, ‘the best and brightest of today’s damned, as I’m told.’

Levi felt his foot sliding back, just an inch, but he held his ground.

‘You’re all murderers, as the commander here tells me,’ he said, showcasing the man in question with a wrinkled hand. Levi was, in all honestly, surprised when the commander turned out to be a younger man, too fat around the chin to hold any handsome properties. He was surprised because it wasn’t Eren.

And Eren was the oldest of the Crusaders by a landslide.

How the fuck did some snot-nosed brat get commander over Eren? Great Sina, they were all going to die.

‘You’ve been chosen for your aptitude and ability in fighting, the best of the best,’ didn’t this sound too good to be true. ‘If fate were kinder, praise be to the Trinity,’ he touched the crown of his head three times, ‘you would be knights in your own right. As it stands, I could slit your throats and watch you bleed out in front of me. I shall receive praise in this life thereafter, for sending sinners such as yourselves into an early decent to perdition.’

Levi wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but he wasn’t stupid enough to not get the gist. He had to hide hands behind his back to keep his clenched fists from showing. How he wished there was some easy means to throw a dagger into the old man’s throat. It would be funny to watch him drown in his own blood.

The man stood, then, and stalked towards them like the vultures that nested along the walls of his home, waiting for people to try to be stupid enough to cross the Bad Lands, to die in the Bad Lands. The Bishop stopped in front of the asshole that had kicked Levi, took him in, and slowly walked along until he stopped in front of Levi and turned to attention.

He saw Eren’s hand grip the handle of his broadsword with intent to unsheathe it. The Bishop, however, was breathing in his face, and by god if it wasn’t enough to make Levi break out. ‘This is familiar,’ he said, and for Eren’s sake Levi kept his jaw clenched, just in case some unfortunate remark were to come out of his mouth. ‘I distinctly remember giving this to you,’ he said, pushing against one of the necklace’s points, using it as a dull stab to pinch into Lev’s skin. ‘Interesting.’

The old man’s gaze traversed the Crusaders. ‘The one that’s missing, I’m guessing you’re wearing his now, am I right?’

Levi expected Eren to say something, anything. Put the bastard in his place, cower, plead, make excuses – anything. But Eren just stood there and said nothing.

The Bishop laughed, turned back to Levi and gripped his chin tightly enough to bruise. ‘He’s pretty, for a boy. Prettier than the last one.’ The decrepit fuck dropped his hand and hummed. ‘I’ll let you keep him; resisting temptation is only virtuous if there is temptation to resist. One of the great many lessons the Lady Maria has taught us.’

And he continued walking.

Levi nearly swore, but Eren sent him a glare once the Bishop’s back was turned that froze Levi on the spot.

It was that look. That _same_ fucking look that his mother had given him. The last expression she had ever given him. He glowered, but said nothing.

The Bishop returned to his seat, and then gave a sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘Well done, commander,’ Levi had a feeling he should have been praising Eren, ‘all fine young men. It would be a pity to execute them, surely,’ and his gaze landed on Levi.

Levi refused to be the one to break eye contact.

‘I am here to offer you annulment of your sins and freedom of the law,’ the Bishop said, bored. ‘I have come with signed papers of the High Court, and for ten years of service your soul shall be saved and your crimes forgotten. Does this agree with you?’

 _No_ , Levi thought, though he knew there was no choice to make. _No it does not._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two! And yes! I have it quite planned out. It's not epically long, but considering there are four instalments in this series, I hope that makes up for it. Again, briefly edited. I hope you enjoyed it! (Exclamation point, explanation point, explanation point, but hey, I'm quite excited?)


	3. The Escape

It had just been a sheet of paper with his information filled out; formal documents that had been copied over and over by hand, but when he signed it, it felt like the ink was his blood and the Bishop the devil. There were twenty of them, surprisingly, though not as surprising as how unhappy the Crusaders looked about it. The longer the queue got, the gloomier they became.

It turned out that the _Grand_ Bishop Reiss had brought with him an entire company, who had been setting up outside and unpacking the Bishop’s things. The man didn’t like to be crowded, Levi guessed, because he didn’t know anything about them until a tall, gangly man wearing the ridiculous high fashion you found around the capital cities, trounced in and set up an easel and his charcoal and, one by one, drew a likeness of each prisoner.

Levi tried to scowl more than usually, just so he didn’t look like himself.

The picture only took a few minutes, but then it was attached to the paper he had signed with wet plaster and placed in front of the Grand Bishop himself, who, one by one, sealed the deed with his insignia and a dollop of blue wax.

He had signed himself off for hell.

What a shitty day this has been.

They were dismissed back to their cells, then, though they weren’t chained up and now that Levi was clean he wasn’t going to dare touch the floors or walls. He figured this wasn’t the normal custom, given how the four of them had previously been given a bunk in the barracks.

There hadn’t been twenty free spaces, but the Bishop couldn’t have known that. He was probably just a fucking-

‘We’re going to war,’ the voice of reason said, the same one who had to point out the fact about the food that they didn’t get and the extra hour of sleep Levi didn’t care about. ‘That’s why… we’re going to war…’

‘Shut up,’ Levi said. _He knew_. ‘It’s always been a war.’

Still, this was a shitty fucking situation and he was back behind bars. The only saving grace was that he _wasn’t_ in the same cell as the fucker who kicked him, because at this point he was irritable enough to send him into an early grave.

‘Not like this,’ his cellmate said, sliding to the floor.

Levi kicked at the wall, right beside his head. ‘I said _shut up_.’

 It was hours before they were brought food, though for each new Crusader a pie had been made, along with their own individual bowl of the same soup from yesterday. ‘A gift from his Holiness,’ the guard explained. Levi knew, with his month-long acquaintanceship with the guards, that this man had come with _His Holi-ass._

But the food was good and he liked the energy it gave him, the invigoration of his tongue, the contentment of his stomach. He chewed slowly and savoured the flavours of both items, because it had been a month since he had last been able to taste any of the food they had provided, and he believed in small pleasures.

His cellmate swallowed hard and reached out a hand. ‘I’m Heath Munsell,’ he said.

Levi considered the hand in front of him as he chewed a sloppy mouthful of dough. ‘Levi,’ he said, but did not move.

‘Just Levi?’ Munsell retracted his hand and looked deep into the palm, and wiped the sweat and dirt off on his new trousers (because _that_ was going to help). Levi scratched at the skin in-between his fingers. It didn’t allay anything. ‘No last name?’

‘No,’ now fuck off.

‘I was arrested for arson,’ he continued, ‘I didn’t do it.’

‘I don’t care.’

Munsell glared at him, both petulant and condescending. ‘We’re all Crusaders, now.’

‘And according to you we’re all going to die.’

His cellmate leaned forward, a wild desperation clinging along his jaw. ‘You don’t think so?’

‘I don’t think _I’ll_ die.’

Munsell leaned back, threw his head back against the stone wall and repeated it until Levi knew it had to hurt. ‘I’m dead, I’m dead, I didn’t do it I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead-

‘Oh, for the love of-’

A baton clanged against the iron bars, courtesy of the fat Bishop’s soldier as he made his rounds. He stopped at the door, and beat his baton into an irritating beat. ‘Enjoying yourselves, lads?’

Levi crossed his arms and glared. The guard grinned, his teeth, however, were tea-stained and crooked. He leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the crossbar of the cell wall. ‘No? That’s a shame.’

‘If,’ Munsell began, hesitantly, even showing the audacity to get to his feet. ‘If you let us out, we-‘

‘Oh,’ the man said, interested, brow raised. ‘You want _out_?’

‘Don’t,’ Levi warned, so concerned he picked the few crumbs left from the pan, and sucked the remaining flavour off of thumbs.

‘But,’ Munsell said, but sat back down and complacently folded his hands in his lap. The guard snorted his laughter and continued on, allowing that damn baton to catch on every bar and clang uncomfortably in the air. ‘Why?’

Levi inspected the pan, but it was empty, so he set it aside, underneath his already discarded bowl. ‘No reason.’

‘No,’ Munsell pressed, ‘ _why_? Do you know him?’

‘I know his type.’ Then, a moment. ‘Have you never been arrested before?’

Munsell shook his head, vigorously. ‘I didn’t do it, either. I swear.’

 _I don’t care_.

‘It’s just…’ Munsell continued, wiping at his brow, skewing the long hair and making him look mad. ‘You know how they are, right? The nobles? They-‘

‘Look at me,’ Levi said, interrupting. ‘Look at my face. Tell me if I care or not.’

‘Fuck you,’ Munsell said, and looked off to the side, his face crumbling underneath that brief spark of bravado. His lower lip trembled, and he mutely cried. Levi cuffed himself over the head and shifted his body away from the pathetic sight, glaring at the cracked plaster because it was nicer to look at than the slick green mucus that spilled from the leak in the wall, cascading down a foot in front of him.

When Munsell’s cries began to become audible, Levi ignored that, too. 

* * *

Thomas had cut him off after they were dismissed to begin preparations. He dragged Eren off to the side, but before Eren could tell him, no, what this looked like, it wasn’t- ‘Is that him?’

‘Who?’

‘You know _damn_ well who!' Thomas said. It always made Eren queasy when someone was more worried about his own wellbeing than he was. He felt an overbearing _pressure_ hanging over his chest, bearing down on him, carried on someone else’s sympathies, on their _empathy_.

‘The Bishop,’ Eren said.

‘Yes,’ Thomas repeated, sardonic, ‘the _Bishop_ , his High Holiness or whatever. Is it him?’

‘What differences does it make?’ Eren tried to push past him, Thomas tried to stop him - Eren was stronger. He made his way down the hallway, stopped abruptly, and yanked the pendent off of his neck so recklessly it caught on his chin and scraped skin off. ‘Damn,’ he said, holding the wound with one hand and holding the pendent out to Thomas.

His friend just stared at it. ‘Just give it to the kid.'

‘I don’t know him,’ Eren said.

‘I know.’

‘I don’t…’ Eren sighed, and because he was close enough he took out the festering oblivion in his stomach on the wall, but the abyss stayed like a stone in his gut, and the only souvenir he had for his efforts were bloody knuckles. ‘He’s damned.’

‘He’ll be fine.’

‘He likes tormenting me,’ Eren continued, not listening. ‘I didn’t think about it before, but he is. Why else would he make those visits? What does someone like _him_ have to gain for…’

‘Eren,’ Thomas said, hands up and cautious.

‘I’m going to–’

‘EREN!’

Eren couldn’t see the murder etched into his face, but he could feel it consume him and he did watch as it lashed out on Thomas, just for that second, and in that second he was on the battlefield with a broadsword soaked in blood and decapitated children at his feet.

Then he was back, and he clung to Thomas and gasped. His friend placed a hand on his shoulder, and tamed him with whispers; ‘It’s alright.’

Eren nodded, and straightened. ‘I can’t even,’ he began, and in his head _I can’t even leave._ Being surrounded by safety was so foreign he couldn’t trust it. He had to go back to the front lines, because he couldn’t survive anywhere else.

They had a month, once, two years ago. A month of freedom in the central city: the Pillar of Maria, the first city of the Blessed Road. It wasn’t much of a city, but it wasn’t the Holy Lands, and Eren found himself in a waking nightmare. ‘All of them,' Eren babbled, 'they don’t…’

‘You’re just shaken. Seeing him.’

Eren smiled ruefully. ‘I don’t even remember telling you.’

Fear constricted around Thomas’ jaw, and Eren instinctively knew the answer wasn’t going to be pleasant. ‘I, um,’ he swallowed. ‘Your, I mean,’ and Thomas slashed a motion along his own chest.

 _Ah_ , Eren thought, his own hand coming up to touch the scar Thomas meant, hidden underneath cloth and chainmail. ‘Of course.’

‘I didn’t get it at first,’ Thomas said, apology underwritten in the statement.

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

Thomas sank back a step. ‘Sorry.’

Eren sighed. ‘Do you think it will make a difference, if I take my pendent back from him?’ He shook his head, ‘Never mind, of course it would.’

‘I can do it.’

 _I don’t want you to_. ‘No,’ but there wasn’t a good enough excuse. ‘I will. Check in with the smith,’ he said, waving his goodbye as he walked towards the basement, the keep’s prison, as it were. He couldn’t feel his feet, but he killed just fine when feeling less.

The Bishop’s men were stationed at the gated doors that lead down into the cellar. It was quite the welcome, for new recruits of the Crusades. First class. When Eren tried to walk by them, their long, polished halberds fell into a cross in front of him, beheading his chances of walking through in peace.

‘Bishop’s orders.’ Eren looked at the man, who lifted his chin and twisted his mouth. ‘ _Bishop’s_ ,’ the man stressed, ‘orders.’

‘I heard you the first time,’ Eren said.

‘Then listen.’

It was mocking, but Eren raised his arms, ‘I’m not doing anything.’

The guard nodded. ‘Good.’

_Disrespectful little–_

‘Ah,’ the Bishop said, like the unwanted spectre he was. He had probably been waiting to ambush Eren, though even Eren could admit that sounded too paranoid. ‘Eren Jæger, I thought I might find you here.’

‘How convenient for you,’ Eren said, acutely aware of how close the halberds were to his neck. He forced himself to turn away from them and bend down on one knee in front of the Bishop and his posse. Swarmed with both protection and power. How lovely.

‘Yes, our One Lord bestows many favours to those he chooses. Rise. I won’t have the blood of such nobility wallowing on the floor. Well,’ he amended amiably, ‘bastard blood, but your depravations must have been bred from somewhere. A soul encapsulated in a heathen’s womb is damned before conception, after all.’

To calm himself, Eren thought of blood soaked sands decapitated limbs. The Bishop began to walk, but he waved Eren forward with his hand, and not even dead children could alleviate the black tar that burned in his veins, hotter than metal left out at high noon. If it could, Eren knew it would kill him.

‘I have never blamed a son for his mother’s sins. She was filth, really, a temptress and,’ the Bishop chuckled. Only his God could laugh with him. ‘What man hasn’t given in to some temptation or other? You understand,’ he said, turning his head and smiling a threat that gutted Eren where he stood. ‘I hope to cut the evil out of you,’ he tapped his forehead three times, ‘the One God has answered my prayers, to keep you alive in war for so long. Perhaps when you die, you will be forgiven.’

Twenty years, he meant, was not long enough.

‘Are you not going to thank me?’ They walked back into the hall and the Bishop stopped and turned. His posse was behind them, the guards each with weaponry sharp enough to pierce chainmail and sever it at point. The Bishop reached out, and caressed Eren’s face. ‘The fires you will face for not repenting are unimaginable,’ his eyes were too beady to looked concerned, in Eren’s opinion, ‘I am only trying to save you from them.’

‘Yes, Your Holiness,’ Eren said, ‘words cannot express my gratitude.’

The Bishop stared, and Eren knew he stopped breathing. He sighed, disappointed, and reached out a hand. In it, one of the little squire boys placed a bronze dagger.

‘You’re not going to move, are you Eren?’

Strangely enough, Eren thought of Levi. ‘No, Your Holiness.’

The Bishop smiled, again, almost looked pleasant. ‘I’m not going to cut you,’ he said, ‘your dedication to the cause is more than proof of your allegiance to the Church.’

He liked to play games.

Eren looked at that dagger, and felt the overwhelming urge to cry.

‘You were just helping out a poor, careless boy, weren’t you?’

‘Of course,’ Eren said, but it sounded like a breath.

‘See?’ the Bishop said, speaking to the squire, wielding the dagger with childish flourish. ‘I told you our mighty Eren Jæger would not fall to sin. He might be a whore’s son, but he has noble blood. He could be redeemed. The Bishop turned and continued along the blue trail to his throne. ‘Of course,’ he said, then turned and sat down. ‘I don’t have the same faith in that… boy.’

Eren found his heart again, beating hard and fast. He wished it would return to hiding. ‘I don’t like hurting you, Eren,' the Bishop said, lamenting a lie, 'but I am not blind. If you are too… lenient, with such things, sin follows fast.’

Eren said nothing, because nothing he said would be proficient at matching the double language the Bishop used. Nothing would rise up and challenge them underneath the guise of obedience, and if he said anything, Eren knew it wouldn’t be him that would be taken out to the pyre.

‘Were you going to retrieve the pendent I gave you?’

‘Yes, Your Holiness,’ Eren said.

‘I had it made special; to remind you of the love both the One God and I have for you. Don’t give away such a precious gift again.’

‘Yes, Your Holiness.’

The man smiled, and then grew bored. He dismissed Eren with a hand. ‘You’re dismissed.’

Eren left, and when he noticed, he was on the outskirts of the town, facing the vast emptiness of the Blessed Road. Ahead, he knew, on the far horizon, was the Pillar city of Maria.

He fell to his knees, and hated nothing more than this weakness. This weakness that made his strength insignificant, made _him_ insignificant. If Levi weren’t there, locked up underneath the keep, he might have.

He could do it.

He could run that old man through; slide steel through skin until he hit his spine. He could hack that body to pieces. He could do all of it; watch the life drain from those dark eyes, all before those knights or guards or squires could stop him. He’d be executed where he stood, but it would be worth it.

 _Fighting can be worthless_ , the Bishop had told him, hours after the fires burnt out, _if you aren’t fighting to protect something, and you still have something left to lose_.

Back then it had been his lovers’ family. But Eren knew nothing of what happened to them, if they were still alive, if they still lived on his father’s lands. It had been seven years, and he had all but forgotten them.

He closed his eyes, was scorched by the dry heat; could feel sweat bead and run between his shoulders and down underneath his arms. Decided, he turned, circumnavigated the outskirts of the town, whitewashed in the sun but swarmed with its people. The market was nothing more than a few shaded stalls in the middle of cleared out dirt; more than Eren ever knew as a young man, a laughable imitation in comparison to the Grand Bazaar.

He ducked around the women, shopping for groceries, garbed brightly and smiling happily, and found the first merchant with a cutthroat bodyguard standing watch.

He was sitting on a wooden stool next to an array of metalwork ranging from combs to rings to daggers. Eren stared at them, laid out on a bed of black velvet. He knew he made the man nervous, knew the merchant had thought he was safe from the law – Crusaders don’t inhabit this town, they stop at the Pillar Maria, or move further inland and only for brief intervals.

Eren licked his lips, hoped they wouldn't crack with movement. ‘How good are you at smuggling?’

What was he doing?

Other than something idiotic, obviously.

‘E-excuse me?’

Eren leaned down, to breathe as hot a breath as he could into the tiny man’s face. ‘If I had something to smuggle out of the city, east, say, could you do it?’

The bodyguard approached, hand on some pitiful excuse for a blade, more suitable for farm work than for cutting throats. ‘Never mind,’ Eren said, and continued on. The talented criminals didn’t live here. There was no profit, no chance for profit. The town survived off of an underwater spring, could grow few crops, mostly existed as a pit stop between the Pillar Maria and the mountain gates.

He returned to the keep, to the stables, found Thomas refilling the feed sacks for the horses.

Upon seeing him, Thomas set the sack down and dusted himself off. ‘What happened?’

‘I can’t wait to get back to the Holy Lands,’ Eren said, feeling old and defeated. ‘I can’t even save one kid.’

‘Does he need to be saved?’

He thought on it. ‘Not unless I do something stupid.’

‘Then don’t do something stupid.’

He almost laughed. ‘Good idea.’ He listened to the horses as they ate, sighed, moved, breathed, _lived_. It calmed him. ‘I wish I was young.’

Thomas laughed. ‘Don’t we all,’ but he was nearly a decade younger than Eren.

‘When I was young, I would have done it, fuck the consequences. He’d be dead and it’d be done with.’

‘Well, what happened?’

Eren walked over to his horse, pet the beast’s flank and tangled his fingers in its mane. ‘I don’t know. Fear? Maybe.’

‘Fair enough,’ Thomas wiped at his brow, threw sweat on the ground. ‘It’s too fucking hot.’

‘If you roast, I’ll eat you.’

‘Funny, Eren.’

Thomas resumed his work, emptying the sacks into their leather satchels, evening the weight out by hand. ‘Don’t you have anything better to do than watch?’

‘No.’

‘Liar.’

But Eren had lived the longest, and no one dared make him do anything. It was simpler when the most a person could fear was how good someone else was at cutting you in half.

‘If you do something stupid,' Thomas offered, 'I’ll cover for you.’

Eren placed a hand over his head. ‘I’m saved.’

But he wasn’t, not according to his Holiness Grand Bishop _Reiss_.

* * *

When Eren darkened his cell, Levi had been thinking _what would the logistics of using intestines to hang someone be, anyway?_ When Eren darkened his cell, it was not appreciated.

‘What, miss me, shithead?’

Eren scowled, leaned his forehead against the iron cell door. ‘No,’ it sounded like a lie. ‘How as your dinner.’

Levi glanced at the tins beside him. ‘I could get used to it.’

‘Don’t,’ Eren said, ‘or do? It depends on what you want to get used to.’

Levi glared. Took the bait. ‘Why?’

‘The front lines aren’t luxurious, to say the least.’

‘Didn’t expect them to.’

Eren closed his eyes. The fire from the torches in the hallway forced the contrast between the sallowness of his skin and the deep bruises underneath his eyes.

‘You need sleep,’ Levi said. Eren heard him, looked like he was going to pass out right there. It would be interesting to watch, but Munsell had cried himself to sleep only an hour ago, and Levi would slit whoever woke him up’s throat. Annoyed, Levi continued, ‘Why are you here?’

‘I need my pendant back.’

Levi touched the centre figure, the portraiture of the Lady Rose. He found himself inexplicably attached to it, but took it off of his head and threw it, watching it land next to Eren’s feet.

Eren followed it, bent down and reached into the cell to pick it up, but Levi caught his wrist first and pulled Eren hard enough for the man’s skull to hit the iron bars with a thick, fleshy collision.

He had him, Levi thought, eyes focused on the broadsword now in his reach–

Eren turned his wrist and grabbed Levi’s, pulled him close but not too violently to hit an eye for an eye. ‘That’s not how you’d do it,’ he told him.

‘Then _how_. Wait till I’m who the fuck knows and hope for the best?’

‘Ideally,’ Eren said, but his eyes drifted from Levi’s face to the barred window on the other side of the room. ‘You don’t want to antagonize them.’

‘You’re just a coward.’

‘I am,’ Eren said, the grip on Levi’s wrist tightening. ‘But not for myself.’

‘Oh, for me? You’re so sweet. No let me the fuck go.’ Eren did. Levi tried to lunge for the sword handle, but his ribcage found resistance before his fingers could touch anything but air.

Eren clicked his tongue, and Levi felt himself pulled up, _again_ , by the scruff of his neck. ‘What are you going to do, huh? Take my sword, cut me down. If I let you, then what?’

Levi struggled out of Eren’s grip, wouldn’t entertain the thought that Eren had let him go. ‘I’ll figure it out.’

‘Is that how you got caught? Thought you could just _figure it out_?’

‘I’m not stupid,’ Levi had been betrayed. Sort of. ‘You’re the one that’s complicating things.’

‘You kill me,’ Eren said, ‘then what? I don’t have the keys, they have nothing to lose by excommunicating you and starving you in there, at best. At worst,’ and something that looked like fear choked Eren for a moment, and Levi decided he didn’t want to know where Eren’s imagination had taken him.

‘I’m not going to sit back and do nothing.’

‘You have months until you’d be sent to the front lines. The Pillar Maria is on the edge of the empire, leave it, you’ll find the Kingdoms to the east, where no one cares about lost Crusaders. Can’t you wait for _that_?’

‘I built something for myself–‘

‘It’s gone,’ Eren said, starting to sound like he was pleading. ‘Please.’

‘Why do you care?’

Levi prepared himself to hear the same bullshit excuse as yesterday. _You remind me of myself_. ‘That’s my business,’ Eren said instead.

‘What?’

‘It’s my business why.’

‘Bullshit.’

He pulled on Eren’s waning patience with that one, because the Crusader backed up and slowly curled his open hand into a fist and pressed it against his mouth. ‘Do you have to be such a prick?’

‘I am a prick.’

Eren almost laughed. ‘It’s annoying.’

‘Humbly screw you.’

‘Fucking little–’ Eren stopped himself, sighed and dropped to his knees to pick up the pendant. He took off the one he was wearing and tossed it at Levi, who caught it so clumsily it nearly continued trajectory over his left shoulder. ‘If you get yourself killed, it’s _not_ going to be my fault.’

‘I’m heartbroken.’

Eren looked like he was on the brink of arguing, but vaulted himself away from crossing that line. He turned on his heel and left, his footsteps echoing and the door slamming. Levi sat back down and looked at the pendant in his hands.

That went spectacularly.

But there was quiet, so Levi positioned himself next to a section of the wall and, with the practice of an entire month, slept sitting up. He was woken by Munsell, feeling better, more amiable than yesterday. It was a good thing he did, because if he didn’t Munsell’s face would be eating his fist for getting so close.

‘We have five minutes,’ Munsell informed him.

‘To do what, squat and take a shit?’

‘Well… I guess, yeah.’

Levi gave up. ‘Are you going to watch?’

Munsell jerked his chin towards the hallway as Levi stood, joints creaking, to take care of business on the far end of the cell, where the stone floor gave way to dirt and a shallow hole had been dug out.

Their cells were unlocked one at a time, and it occurred to Levi that the town they were in probably existed as a prison hold for either the Pillar Maria or the Mountain Gates. The town was situated around the keep, after all. There couldn’t have been more than a couple hundred people living here.

They were escorted outside by the Bishop’s men, and loaded into carts. He found himself looking for Eren, but didn’t see him amongst the Crusaders that were loading packs on the back of their horses. ‘Make things easy for us,’ the Crusader that Levi recognised as Eren’s friend said, packing in padded mattress rolls out in with them. ‘Don’t do something stupid. We’re all being escorted.’

Levi noted the other guards, the ones that didn’t wear chainmail and blood red tunics, but instead full plated armour that reflected and burned his retinas. Munsell gripped Levi’s elbow.

‘Don’t do anything,’ his cellmate whispered, just to hear his own voice because Levi was sure as _fuck_ not deaf.

‘Let go of me,’ Levi said, lifting his elbow away from Munsell’s grasp. ‘I’m not an idiot. I don’t want to die, either.’

‘Sorry.’

Levi sighed. The zealous idiot and the murderer from before were loaded into the cart with them, but the other sixteen were kept separate. The Crusaders looked to each other, every so often, checking something that only became apparent when more supplies were loaded in the cart with the four of them.

Eren appeared, then, carrying weapons and loaded them into a chest in another cart to their right. He didn’t look over, didn’t check on Levi at all.

It was disconcerting to be loaded like property, but not expected to do anything themselves. If Levi didn’t know better, he would have sworn they were just transporting them to another cell. _We can’t trust you with this_ , their actions said.

Levi didn’t like to be patronized.

They moved out within the hour. It was efficient; the Crusaders carried a weight that pressed against their shoulders that the Bishop’s soldiers lacked, and they were the ones who set the pace. The commander couldn’t stop glaring at the man to his right and a few paces ahead, and Eren couldn’t stop looking wistfully out into the dry plains that marked the no-man’s land of nothing that men had bled and died for.

They stopped when the sun lowered beyond the mountain ridges. Levi knew the moment it happened because he had taken to watching the last landmark he could associate with _home_ shrink into the rolling hills before flattening out into what he learned was called _The Blessed Road_.

Levi had heard of the massive highway connecting all of the central cities in the empire called that, mostly it was called by the moniker _The Stairway Highway_. Follow it up, inland, you found yourself surrounded by more wealth than you had ever seen. Follow it down, you walked into the desert, and just _try_ to extract gold from the unbending earth, just try and watch the world laugh at your attempts.

The sky was violet and the brightest stars were visible, the moon pale and half-formed to the naked eye. They were unloaded, a pit was set up, and there was nowhere to run. A day to reach the outpost they were at, a day to reach the Pillar Maria. Stuck on the side of the world no one cared about and stranded in a land that couldn’t help you.

He hated the desert.

The new recruits were forced to dig out pits for fire, drag out the logs of wood they had carried with them. Set them on fire. Set up the pit. It was hours before they were settled and food was cooking on the pots hanging above the embers, and it took that long for Eren to finally show up and sit his ass down beside Levi.

‘Took you long enough,’ Levi said.

‘You had company, don’t start that with me.’

‘ _You_ try talking to them for an hour. Tell me when your ears start to bleed.’

Eren smiled, amused, but it was forced and Levi didn’t appreciate the effort. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t try to run.’

‘Because I can outrun a horse. Right.’ Levi ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m not an idiot.’

‘Mm. I’m starting to get that.’

‘Shut up.’

‘No,’ Eren said. ‘You’ll get lonely. How are you?’ He turned the question to Munsell, and then smiled at Dennis Eibringer, the murderer. He had decided to become incredibly talkative halfway through the journey, starting with complaints about how sore his ass was getting.

‘ _I’m_ ,’ Levi said, interjecting, but he had nothing left to say. ‘Not…fine.’

Eren turned back to him, and Levi glared at the other two to stay out of it. Munsell backed down first, but he was the only one who looked interested in talking. ‘Not fine?’

Levi crossed his arms and glared at the fire. ‘No.’

‘…Okay. Any particular reason why?’ Eren inclined his head. ‘Other than the obvious.’

‘Obvious,’ Levi repeated, sardonic. He didn’t know what he wanted, but whatever it was it needed Eren to just keep talking. ‘What would you know about obvious?’

Eren sighed, leaned forward and checked on the broth in the pot, stirring it only a half circle before sitting back down, looking put out. ‘I don’t think you even know what that means.’

Levi didn't. ‘Fuck off.’

‘I forgot your names,’ Eren said, once again directing his attention towards the other three.

‘Munsell, sir,’ his old cellmate said, leaning forward with a hand. Eren shook it before Levi could warn him not to. ‘Heath Munsell.’

‘The arsonist,' Eren confirmed.

‘I didn’t, I swear I didn’t do it.’

Eren reached behind him and began to pull off his tunic. ‘Too late to be exonerated, I’m afraid.’ He looked to Levi. ‘You’re not innocent, too, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Ah, good.’

‘I’m not,’ the only zealot of the group said. He was trying too hard, in Levi’s opinion. ‘I-’

‘Lied,’ Levi said, ‘obviously.’

‘Shut up!’ Kitts Woerman was the worst sort of man, in Levi’s opinion. Scared of his own fucking shadow but someone able to kiss ass enough to survive for as long as he had.

‘What did you do, then,’ Levi said, leaning forward and resting and arm on a propped up knee. ‘Let’s hear it.’ 

‘I don’t have to answer to a piece of shit like you,’ Woerman said, scowling.

‘Ah,’ Eren said, ‘he’s got you down to a T.’

‘Shut up,’ Levi said to Eren, then directed the question to Woerman. ‘What did you do?’

Woerman looked between the two of them, and the tension that arose in his silence made Munsell giggle nervously. It wasn’t dangerous, but it was the air of two betters ganging up on a lesser victim.

‘Dennis Eligenburg,’ Eren said, passing over Woerman to their quiet companion.

‘Dennis _Eibringer,_ sir.’

‘Sorry,’ Eren didn’t sound sorry, ‘you killed someone.’

‘Yes,’ Ebringer's voice was almost non-existent. ‘My sister’s husband.’

‘I’m guessing he deserved it.’

The man nodded, minutely, still wedged in the safety of an oblivion inside his own head. ‘He beat her.’

Eren nodded. ‘You’re here because you’re a blacksmith.’

Eibringer looked to his hands. ‘I know.’

‘You’re here,’ Eren said, turning to Munsell, ‘because you nearly escaped. You,’ Eren said, pointing to Woerman, ‘Are here because you were the only one down there that had any sort of formal training. You,’ he clarified, still indicating to Woerman, ‘were not my idea.’

Woerman glared, but the edges of fear were too deeply-seeded in his posture for Levi to think anything of it.

‘And you,’ Eren continued, turning to Levi, ‘are ridiculous.’

‘Fuck you too.’

‘What did he do?’ Munsell asked.

‘You don’t ask that of Crusaders,’ Eren said.

Woerman started. ‘But you fucking just told everyone–’

‘What I do is what I do and I’m telling you to stop fucking talking,’ Eren said, his face blank and bored. Levi laughed. ‘Besides, I haven’t said shit on what you did. Be glad that I don’t. Not all deaths are on the front lines.’

‘I didn’t start the fire,’ Munsell said, again, ‘it was the Lord’s son, he wanted… they had to blame somebody.’

‘You’re exonerated,’ Eren said, barely paying Munsell attention because Levi was trying to swallow giggles that kept falling out from his teeth. ‘Sorry about the enslavement. You could have killed them in revenge, but now you lost your chance.’

‘What?’

‘The Crusaders are filled with liars, cheats, murderers,’ Eren tilted his head, ‘monsters and innocent men. We all become brothers.’

‘But,’ Munsell started.

‘It’s best to let it go. Anger will kill you.’

Woerman couldn’t keep his fingers still. ‘We’re going to war,’ he said.

‘We’ve always been at war,’ Eren said. Levi agreed.

Woerman, frustrated, scowled. ‘But the extra–’

‘I’m going to tell you this once' Eren said, interrupting. 'The front lines? They’re not changing. Not with any amount of bodies on our side. No one is winning, and no one is losing.’

‘So we die,’ Levi said.

Eibringer whimpered. Munsell looked like he was going to cry. Woebringer looked angry that he was about to shit in his trousers.

‘Usually,’ Eren admitted. At least he was honest. ‘It’s not uncommon for Crusaders to die before the front lines. Personally, I’ve never had the stomach to run a sword through my own gut, but the option is open to you.’

‘Why are you here?’ Eibringer said, quietly. Levi was impressed Eren heard enough to answer.

‘So that you know why you were chosen. They,’ Eren rotated his wrist, indicating the other sixteen. ‘They weren’t. They won’t make it. You need to know your strengths if you’re going to survive.’

‘And being ridiculous is going to help me survive,’ Levi said, but understanding. He survived. That was his M.O. That is why he was chosen. In some roundabout way, that is probably why Eren paid more attention to him than the others. ‘How long until we become jaded old men like you?’

Eren grew self-conscious, even went a little pink at the ears, which was more surprising than if the Bishop turned out to enjoy dressing in frilly dresses on his downtime. ‘I don’t know.’

Levi found himself sitting up, the itch to reach out and touch him urging his limbs. ‘What if we go insane?’

Eibringer’s whimper was louder this time, and it chased away the itch and Levi dropped his hand.

‘You go insane,’ Eren said, but he sounded confused. Like it was _obvious_ that they were all already mad. ‘You learn to live with it.’

Or die, that part was left unsaid. Eren looked at him, for less than a second, but it made Levi acutely aware of how much he had been staring. He forced his focus to his feet, and glared.

‘Oh,’ Eren said, getting to his feet. He was looking over Munsell’s head, and Levi followed the gaze to find Eren’s friend waving Eren over. ‘I also came to warn you that you will die from dehydration if you try to leave in the middle of the night. Good night,’ he said, directing the last phrase to Levi, who nodded in return.

 _Don’t do something stupid_ , he was saying.

 _Thanks, asshole_.

Eren walked away with his tunic wrapped up in his hands and didn’t look back. Levi couldn’t explain why he expected the man to, but because he didn’t he took it out on the other three. He didn’t even really mind Eibringer, or Munsell, despite how simpering he could be.

But every time Woerman spoke, even if it was something nice about the wife he left behind, Levi wanted to throw embers at his face.

The soup was done. If they kept eating like this Levi wasn’t going to need a bowel movement, everything was going to be water.

‘My sister doesn’t know what happened to me,’ Eibringer said, as they were eating. ‘Do you think they tell them, or just…’

‘They do,’ Munsell said, but he had no way of knowing.

Levi considered rectifying the lie, but let it live, and continued to eat. There wasn’t enough rapport between any of them to continue a conversation more than a few sentences, trying, perhaps, to build a bond between them that the other Crusaders seemed to have.

‘What if one of the others tries something?’ That was Woerman’s contribution, and by _others_ he meant the sixteen useless criminals that the Crusaders didn’t want, but took anyway.

Levi looked at the other groups, at how they seemed closer than even the Crusaders. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘If they do I’ll handle it.’

Munsell didn’t look convinced. ‘But–’

‘I’ll handle it,’ Levi stressed, and set the tin aside, only to watch as Eibringer took it and placed it on his lap, on top of his own dish.

‘I’ll clean it,’ the murderer offered.

‘Thanks,’ Levi said, and stretched himself out on the hard ground. He faced the stars, thought of his own insignificance, and settled himself to a half-sleep.

* * *

It bothered him, for reasons he couldn’t explain, to not have time to talk to Levi in nearly two days. He was almost curious. _What do you think of Pillar Maria_? What of the Crusaders? Their populace took up half the town, spread out as an ugly growth to her boarders, built up in make-shift tents and bunkers. The city would not hold them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t allowed within her walls. The first great keep of the Empire, headed by the Church of the One God.

The city that brought them out of the dark ages, the first guardian towards the lush promised lands that belonged to Sina.

Or so it was said.

He felt nervous, like some part of him was responsible to ensure that Pillar Maria was a shining example of a city; large and built upwards, upon itself and sequestered behind walls with painted murals standing twenty feet tall. It was carved in up the last remaining vestiges of the mountain range and sank deep underground to meet the underground river and the last lake it pooled in to before the desert swallowed it up.

He couldn’t ask Levi about what he thought on any of it, because the moment they entered the encampment Levi was not his problem. Initiation was done by the commanding forces, those that were a part of the Crusades because they were the wrong son in the line of succession, and wanted glory in some manner before they died. They never went out to the front lines. They knew the horrors in name only, read the war on pieces of paper that came back either with a traumatised soldier or on the wings of a falcon.

The falcons didn’t live long, but they lived longer than the soldiers.

It would be another week, at least, before the lot of them would be released to his brigade for training. Chose your own, train your own. The family you made out of blood and fear was too fleeting to do anything but; and if it was family you were fighting beside, then you fought twice as hard because it hurt ten-fold to lose them.

It would be easier to fight with strangers, against strangers. Eren would have lost his humanity and that would have been it. He would have gone mad. He even entertained the possibility of turning and biting his master, but couldn’t, because people like Thomas fought next to him, because people like Levi had to be protected.

He had trouble sleeping. Thomas came up with the solution.

‘It’s him, right?’ That’s how it started.

‘It’s who?’ Eren had busied his hands with sharpening every blade in the armoury. It wasn’t his job. He had a week off before he was to train all twenty of the new recruits up to standards. He was on vacation.

‘The kid,' Thomas clarified. 'He’s the reason you’re so fucked up.’

‘Excuse me?’

Thomas raised his hands. ‘I’m fine with it.’

‘Nothing’s going on.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ he said, lowering his hand to chase away Eren’s anger. ‘But you’re worried about him.’

Eren replaced the axe with a sword, propping it up on the blocks of wood, and picked up the metal file and dragged it along the length in a practiced angle. ‘Of course I’m worried about him,’ he finally said. ‘He’s still here.’

‘You thought he’d escape?’

Eren paused in his work. ‘I don’t know. I guess.’

‘They’re pretty strict until you return from your first rotation out front, I don’t think he’s had the opportunity.’

‘Then he’s an idiot.’

‘Eren,’ Thomas said, reaching out and taking the file away and picking up the sword and replacing it on the rack. ‘I told you, if you do something stupid, I’ll back you up.’

‘You’re an idiot, too. A fucking idiot. Why would you do that?’

‘Because you’re my friend. You saved my life. If I asked you to help me escape, you would.’

‘It’s easier on the front lines.’

Thomas eyed him, pulled a stool from the side of the tent and sat down in front of him. ‘Why have you never tried it?’

‘Someone’s going to die if I do.’

‘Who, me?’

‘Probably. You’re terrible with a sword.’

‘Funny.’

Eren smiled, looked younger for a second, then his age caught up with him. ‘Everyone. I don’t want to know what… if we lost…’

‘There are the Mountain Gates,’ Thomas suggested. ‘We aren’t winning, you know that.’

‘No, we’re a distraction. You know, when I first realised it, I was so angry I almost killed the commanders in their sleep. For playing this… _game_ with us. We weren’t winning, we weren’t living. The Holy Wars were a means to get rid of the trash the Church didn’t want.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

Eren saw them, in the shadows, the corners. ‘You know why.’

‘I know why.’

‘It’s stupid, but I don’t want him to know why.’

‘It’s not stupid.’

Eren looked at him, pointed. ‘Shut up.’

Thomas grinned.

Eren looked down at his empty hands. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

Thomas stood and patted Eren’s shoulder. ‘You don’t have a lot to lose?’

Eren shouldered his hand off.

‘The worst they will do to you' Thomas said, 'is send you to the front lines. That’s happening anyway. If he doesn’t get far enough, that’s the worst that will happen to him, too.’

‘That’s a shitty solution.’

‘You’re the one who’s considering treason without even getting some.’

Eren twisted in his seat and hooked his foot around Thomas’ ankle and kicked him with the other. He watched as the blond fell hard on his hands and started to curse out with the pain. ‘I deserved that,’ Thomas said, groaning and getting to his feet. ‘Fuck.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Wait,’ Thomas backtracked, forgetting about his sore wrists. ‘What, _now_?’

Eren bounced to his feet, a nervous energy filling him with a confidence he hadn’t felt in years. ‘I can’t be any more prepared.’

‘You _aren’t_ prepared.’

‘Exactly.’

‘You’re going to die and I’m going to die,’ Thomas said; a lightheaded wail that meant nothing. ‘Eren, you’re crazy. I didn’t want to believe it–’

Eren peaked out underneath the tent’s folded flap, took note of the position of the moon. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think now.’

‘Don’t take the sword you were working on,’ Thomas advised weakly, ‘you’re shit at upkeep.’

Eren looked at the sword, at the axe; his eyes tracked over everything he had worked on, walked to the far side of the tent wall and picked up a sword, smaller than he was used to, but it wasn’t for him.

‘You’re kidding,’ Thomas said.

‘I’ve been here awhile.’

‘Most guys go out to _Maria’s Garden_. Of course you stay behind and play with swords.’

‘That’s almost funny.’

‘Aw, c’mon,’ Thomas said, following him out of the tent. ‘ _That_ was gold. You have to stop being so touchy about it.’

Eren stopped, spun, brought the tip of the sword to Thomas’ chin, but the hold was weak and the distance unintimidating. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

‘Ugh, fine, go.’

‘No, you’re keeping watch,’ Eren said.

‘No, fuck you.’

‘Yes, you’re fucked. Now follow me.’

Thomas followed, silent but expressive in his annoyance. Eren felt better, with the blond behind him. Just someone who could stand next to him that he didn’t feel the insatiable need to protect. And there was always someone. If he was smart, he’d have found a way to turn off his heart. Cut it out, turn it cold.

It didn’t seem to work like that.

He didn’t ask why Thomas was awake. When his friend had leave, he became nocturnal for a single, gratifying reason. It was nearly morning, and Thomas’ relaxed limbs told an entire story in themselves.

Finding the tent was easy, it wasn’t guarded, though the horses were. They slipped underneath the wall of tarp and were plunged in near darkness. Thomas had a harder time getting through, due to his taller stature, but managed. He hit Eren’s leg, telling him what he already knew.

He glared at the darkness, waited for his eyes to adjust to what light there was, and without the moonlight and stars from outside, it wasn’t much.

‘Now what,’ Thomas whispered into Eren’s ear. ‘I can’t see shit.’

Eren tried to raise a hand to hush him, but ended up hitting his nose instead. Thomas slapped a hand to it and blindly attacked Eren in the dark, swatting him and distracting Eren long enough for him to kick someone in the head.

The boy, or man, or whatever age he was started to yelp, but Eren dropped to his knees and smothered the sound with a hand, and for good measure placed the sword’s edge against his throat.

The body raised his hands in surrender; there was a slight trembling in his lower lip. ‘Do you know Levi?’

Carefully, the man nodded.

‘Do you know where he is?’

Again, a nod.

‘Where?’

He pointed, but it wasn’t quite clear _where_ he pointed. ‘I can’t see a fucking thing.’

Slowly, carefully, he pulled Eren’s hand down. ‘East corner,’ the man said.

‘Where?’

‘East corner, right, right there, in the corner.’

Ah. Eren pressed the sword’s edge closer, so that the steel froze the man’s skin. ‘What happened tonight?’

‘N-nothing.’

‘Correct.’

Thomas guided him back up, and they stepped along the edge, the thick tarp brushing against their arms. Eren really wasn’t in the mood to accidentally step on someone’s hand and wake up the entire tent.

Everything was built facing northwest, so the eastern corner was, in fact, just the eastern corner. Unless the man was useless with directions, there was, thankfully, only one spot that Levi could be. Eren could barely make out the body in the dim light, and he was reluctant to tap it and test his chances.

Except when his finger brushed on the body’s shoulder, the prone man twisted and grabbed his wrist, forcing Eren’s forearm into the dirt and further, until the body had rolled on top of him and pinned his chest with a knee and his other arm.

Thomas had to smother a laugh.

For a split second, Eren was scared Levi was going to take the sword and run Thomas through. Instead, he pulled back.

‘What the fuck are _you_ doing here?’ With him, was left unsaid, but the you was stressed enough, said to the room enough, that Eren knew that was what he meant.

‘Do you still want to escape?’ In his head, Eren thought their encounter would have happened different. Just a little. 

Levi's voice was still thick with sleep. ‘ _Now_?’

‘Eren doesn’t really think things through,’ Thomas supplied, and Eren, still pinned down by Levi’s knee, reached out and hit the blonde’s shin.

‘Are you' Levi pinched the bridge of his nose, 'Are you fucking kidding me?’

Eren tapped at Levi’s knee, and Levi stood, leaned down and offered a hand to help Eren up. Eren ignored it and reached over to the tarp, pulled it up, peered outside, and then said without preamble, ‘Let’s go.’

‘You heard him,’ Thomas said as Eren slid underneath the tent and emerged on the other side. There were three torches still lit at this time, one was in front of the Commander’s tent, where the Generals slept and ate and shat and planned their next fruitless list of strategies. The other two were in front of the stables.

They weren’t going to the stables. There was a horse farm on the other side of the Pillar Maria. If they stole one there, no one from the encampment would know until morning, and the soldiers of the city were fat and lazy with the continued presence of Crusaders.

It could work. Not if you tried to go back. But it could. ‘Thomas, raid the kitchen?’

‘Thomas,' his friend repeated, unamused, 'walk into the guillotine, why don’t you.’

‘Don’t be so dramatic.’

‘This,’ Thomas said, ‘ _coming from you_.’

Levi kicked the tarp away from him and stood. ‘What the fuck is going on?’

‘He’s a little moody,' Thomas commented to Eren, 'isn’t he?’

Eren was fast enough to catch the punch that Levi had wanted to throw at Thomas, commandeered Levi's attention and asked him; ‘Do you want to escape or not?’

Levi ripped his hand away. ‘What kind of fucking question is that?’

‘Kid, I wouldn’t do it,' Thomas advised, 'Sun’s baked his head.’

‘Thomas,’ Eren said, ‘shut _up_.’

‘If he pretends he’ll be all fine and dandy if you escape,' Thomas continued, 'he’s a fucking liar. I’m not in this.’

Eren glared. ‘Yes you fucking are, now get water and food.’

Thomas shook his head. ‘The Cook's going to fucking slaughter me when he finds out.’

‘ _Thomas_.’

‘Fine,’ Thomas said, throwing aggression blindly into the air, carried on his limbs. ‘Fine, I hate you, but fine.’

‘Thank you.’

Thomas left. Levi must have fully woken up, because the second he did he took a fistful of Eren’s shirt and pulled him down until he was at eye level ‘What the fuck?’

‘A little gratitude would be nice,’ Eren said, not sure how to pull away without hurting the kid. 

‘I was handling myself _fine_ ,’ Levi said, voice low and dangerous and it made Eren feel like he was the junior in their relationship. ‘I was taking your fucking advice, shithead. Front lines?’

But that wouldn’t spare him from _seeing_ the front lines. ‘Honestly,' Eren amended, 'there’s more of a chance of you dying on the front lines than them catching you.’

‘And it took you days to decide that?’

‘No,’ not really, ‘Thomas changed my mind.’

Levi let him go. ‘I’m not following a madman.’

‘You’re not following me anywhere,’ Eren said. ‘I’m staying. You’re going.’

‘Why?’

This was the third time Levi had asked him that question. ‘I don’t know.’

‘ _You don’t know_?’

Thomas returned, a fat cask of water and a smaller bag of rations in each hand. ‘Now what?’

Eren took both from him. ‘Go back to bed.’

‘What, that’s it?’

‘Yes.’

‘ _You_ could have done that!’

Eren shrugged. ‘Probably.’

‘Who the hell says I’m going with you?’ Levi. They both looked down at him. His pale skin practically glowed in the moonlight. That was a problem. Eren opened the gourd and spilled some water on the ground, leaned down and dug his fingers into the mud and when he stood he smeared it on Levi’s face.

Levi's hands immediately found the dirt, but Eren’s stopped them from pressing and wiping it away. ‘Don’t.’

‘I haven’t said yes to this,’ Levi said. _Yet._

‘You don’t get a choice.' He looked to 'Thomas.'

Thomas didn’t look happy. ‘Yeah, fine – bed. If I hear anything,’ he warned.

‘You’ll do nothing.’

‘No,’ Thomas shook his head. ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

They were at a standoff.

‘Fine,’ Eren gave in.

‘Fine,’ Thomas echoed, then turned and walked away, vanishing.

Eren tried to drag Levi with him, but Levi dug his heels into the dirt.

‘ _What_?’

‘I’m not going,’ Levi informed.

‘You don’t understand–’

‘Yes I do,’ Levi said, ‘this is a stupid idea. You said so yourself.’ Levi held on to both of Eren’s arms, looked him dead in the eye. Eren wasn’t sure what he could see, in the darkness. ‘I appreciate it, but I’m not going.’

‘You might not survive long enough to escape during battle.’

Levi shook his head, pulled the tarp back up and slid underneath it without a word. Eren, feeling like something had slipped from his fingers, left the tent to return the stolen supplies.

He didn’t want to wonder what it was about Levi that had him throwing reason to the wind. He didn’t know how to explain it, explain what he saw in the kid.

Maybe it was the simple thought that he’d make a great man someday, and if Eren couldn’t see it, he wanted someone else to, too.

* * *

Levi settled back into the padded cushion that served as his mattress with a sigh, then found his body curling into itself.

At least, he thought to himself, at least his decision hadn’t been the wrong one. Their first night there he found himself in the pitch darkness outside the camp, halfway towards the walls. His aim was the stables they had passed on their way there, tucked and hidden but the smell of horses and their shit was unmistakable.

But he didn’t do it.

He didn’t do it because of one fucking old man - that sanctimonious _prick -_  and fucking Eren. He stayed out there for an hour before dragging his ass back to his cot, angry at whatever it was about the Crusader that made it necessary to stay. He couldn’t figure it out.

Until now.

Levi gripped at his stomach, which hadn’t stopped turning the second he woke up to find Eren winded, pinned down underneath his knee.

It was foolhardy to try to escape now. He had come to the realisation that night, realised Eren was probably _right_ and the only way to do it would be to go MIA during a battle. Realised that even if he did escape, successfully, for whatever reason Levi was _Eren’s_ problem and if the Bishop had found out…

Levi tossed, turned, found himself staring at blackness but knew the roof was above his head. For the second time since their meeting, thoughts of Eren kept Levi awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a monster that I shouldn't have written because I have 6 essays leaning upwards to 25,000 words in total due in by the end of the month and this chapter kept growing. It's what I do when I need a break, so it's not a bad thing, and I'm honestly just telling you this as a way in excusing any errors you might read. Just, whew, 9,000 words for one chapter. I hope you enjoy it! Next chapter might be out tomorrow, but likely it will be out the day after. For those wondering, it'll be called The Sin. Stay tuned!


	4. The Sin

It had only been a month, two total, since had had been free. He was starting to forget the reality of the feeling and had begun to rely on the memories of it. Of waking up, deciding on the course of action, if not carried on from the day before. Rules meant nothing, laws were obstacles that could be avoided, could be broken, the law could be run from.

Things in the encampment were different than anything Levi had ever known before. Crusaders rotated in their brigade. Your brigade was your family, those you fought and bled for. It was rare for Crusaders to mingle outside of this brigade, but unlike the gangs from the cities, this estrangement seemed to be a means of self-preservation.

No one hated each other, not the way people usually hated others. Everyone seemed content to let the infuriating, the monstrous ones be. That man? With the scars and the burned out eye? He slaughtered his daughters during a harsh winter, for food, they said. Didn’t find out until springtime. No one _hated_ him. No one hated the rapists. The child molesters.

Levi wanted to hate them. Did hate them. Couldn’t understand why the others didn’t, either.

‘It’s simple,’ Thomas told him, when the topic came up. He had been whittling a spare piece of wood. ‘The cannibal? One eye, won’t last the first night he’s on the front lines. The rapists? Best to send them out, first.’

Eren didn’t say anything like that in so _simple_ of terms, but he had been the one that Levi asked first. _They’ll get what they deserve_ , he had said. _Not everyone is a person, sometimes they’re monsters_.

Don’t worry about it.

Not that Levi saw much of Eren, or Thomas, or any of the other Crusaders that were, apparently, in his brigade. No, because every new recruit was trained together. Strength, agility, basic swordplay. The Crusaders don’t have _time_ to train you boys, not until you can hold a sword right.

They were annoyed, it was obvious, annoyed that there were twenty of them instead of four.

The most irritating part, however, of the first month, was that he had learned to tolerate Munsell, had befriended Eibringer, actively hated Woerman, though the feeling was mutual. They became a constant in his life, and his thoughts shifted from _what are they doing now_ , in relation to those he had left at home, to _Munsell is going to die from food poisoning before he ever reaches the front lines_.

Stupid things. Things that happened between them during the day. It was only ever about the three of them, because they were segregated from the other sixteen.

Thomas refused to speculate on why this was, though he figured it would be obvious soon enough. Eren had been called away before he could answer. The full-fledged Crusaders became irritatingly busy after the first week. Preparing, Eren had explained when he had five minutes to spare and Levi cared enough to listen. There was a lot that needed done before they could go to the front lines.

Escort food provisions seemed the most common. Though now that there were twenty where there should have been four, no one had time. Eibringer was called out far too often, was told bluntly by the commander of their brigade that no, he wouldn’t fight on the front lines. He’s stay behind with the medics.

He was taken out of preliminary training because they had sixteen unaccounted for bodies that they needed to make equipment for, because the stationary blacksmiths were too busy.

Eibringer, Levi learned quickly, was going to be important if they wanted to survive. The front lines were constantly changing position, apparently; you couldn’t keep land for more than a few days before you either won some or lost some, and you wanted your blade sharp.

You couldn’t protect an armoury so you had none; you had a blacksmith instead.

It was two weeks in when they first got their swords, and it was that day that Levi learned that Eibringer had nerves of steel. He had stopped the blade an inch from his throat, caught up in the fight, nearly cut him down out of habit.

‘Thank Trinity,’ Eibringer said, sagging after it became apparent Levi had control of the blade. ‘I thought I was going to die.’

His reflexes were shit, but he didn’t bat an eye.

It was a month of doing the same motions, the same strength exercises. They weren’t given chores because there were sixteen others to do them for them, but they were given more drills than anyone else.

Then the month was over, and they were deemed ready to join the others. They were given one day to celebrate; a bonfire was made out of a wagon that had broken down beyond repair.

Levi found himself sitting with the other three, found himself watching the other sixteen.

‘They’re going to send them out first,’ Woerman said. ‘You can tell.’

‘Like lambs to the slaughter,’ Munsell agreed, not happy about the assessment but not upset with it either.

‘We’re all going to the slaughter,’ Levi said, leaning back on his hands and looking up at the stars. ‘You’re an idiot if you think otherwise.’

‘But they _want_ us alive,’ Munsell said, ate. He had calmed down during their month of training, stopped fighting against the unfairness of his conviction. ‘The others, I mean.’

Levi hummed in acknowledgment. Eibringer looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him up. ‘What?’ Levi demanded of him.

‘They don’t stand a chance.’

‘They stand a good a chance as any,’ Levi said, bored with that unwavering moral code.

‘No, I wasn’t given enough metal. Half of them won’t even have chainmail.’

‘Sucks to be them,’ Woerman said, picked up his mug and drank the shit excuse for wine that was provided. ‘Better for us. Right, Levi?’

‘I’m not listening to you.’

‘Fuck you.’

Levi tried to find Eren in the midst of the crowd. It was hard in the dark, but not impossible. He knew Woerman was glaring at him, he always was. He had the nasty habit of hiding behind Levi whenever they were tasked with trying to fight against an enemy larger than themselves. The enemy then being Crusaders and their weapons nothing more than wooden sticks, but the sentiment wasn’t appreciated.

Woerman was a coward. Levi had no doubt that if it came between him and someone else, Woerman would throw that someone else on the enemy sword before he even tried to fight them.

And that is why he refused to speak to him. Levi didn’t want any delusions; he didn’t want a false attachment to something pitiful and weak get him killed. Not when it wasn’t deserved.

He kept watch over Eibringer and Munsell, though.

‘You’re an asshole.’

‘So?’

Munsell sniggered, Eibringer looked uncomfortable, but he never tried to pacify their fights.

‘Looking for Eren?’

Levi slid his wandering gaze back to Woerman. ‘No,’ he said, and stood. There were other people he could sit with. He could sit by himself, even; it wouldn’t be as annoying.

He decided on a group of Crusaders that didn’t belong to his brigade, because he would be damned before he wandered around for anyone, looking like some lost fucking puppy.

It was a mistake. Levi knew it the second he sat down and the six of them turned and stared. There was a ghastly horror blatant in the shadow of their faces, and Levi thought to the pitiful soldiers who had returned from the front lines, soaked in blood that wasn’t theirs and nearly falling off their horses, dead.

‘You’re Eren’s brat,’ one said, a bit deranged but his skin didn’t look nearly as sallow and diseased as his comrades’ did. ‘What the fuck do you want.’

‘Nothing.’

‘We don’t feed strays,’ the man continued. Levi noticed that his hair was thinning; a strange sight to see on a man so young.

Levi didn’t give a shit. He made to stand, but another reached out and yanked him down so hard on his ankle it throbbed. ‘What’s it like, huh? I’ve always wanted to know.’

‘Let go of me,’ Levi said, calm, but the man’s fingers were long and persistent. The hands that refused to let go of a sword for months; however long he had been on the front lines.

‘You’re fucking disgusting,’ another said, but he wasn’t talking to Levi, he was talking to the man holding on to him. It wasn’t angry, revolted, it was smooth with the ease of habit.

‘You get to doing each other on the front lines,’ the man holding on to Levi said, leaning in. His teeth were falling out and practically black. ‘No women. I’ve always wondered…’ If Levi could play idiot, he would. He did not like what the man was implying. ‘He does men anyway, right? Got to have practice. What’s he like, huh? What’s it like being his _bitch_?’

The group chorused with laughter. Levi slipped a forefinger underneath his captor’s thumb and bent it backwards and then smashed his nose in with a fist. He stood walked away, away, away from the bonfire and the other three and away from wherever Eren could possibly be.

That night, he had nightmares.

* * *

Eren slammed the table with his fist and the voices hushed because when Eren got angry, he got murderous, and everyone knew it. ‘No.’

‘We don’t have a choice,’ his commander said, looking distant and distracted, far away from the tent. ‘It’s Grand Bishop Reiss’ orders. We have to–’

‘Training takes three months,’ Eren said, because the others in his brigade wouldn’t. Thomas had a hand on the handle of his sword and watched the verbal battle with seasoned eyes. Eren was a monster, and everyone knew that, even if they constantly forgot. ‘First, basics. Second, with us, third for tactics.’

‘It’s not just us; half of the camp are to set out in a week.’

Something was happening. Eren wasn’t winning this, couldn’t because the moment the Crusaders started to act contrary to direct orders from the Church, their legion army would come. They didn’t even have to directly fight them. All they had to was seal up the Pillar Maria and guard the Mountain Gates and they would starve out in a month, if it weren’t for the fact that they would kill each other first.

Eren looked around the tent, at the eight other bodies that refused to meet his gaze. With the exception of the commander, Thomas, and himself, they were all new recruits from that year. That _year_.

‘Dammit,’ Eren said, a part of him curling in and trying to hide from the world, from reality. He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Dammit, _dammit! No!_ ’

‘Eren,’ their commander said, but only Thomas was brave enough to approach Eren and hold his shoulder, steadying him or restricting him, it depended on how Eren’s anger reacted. ‘Only six men returned this time.’

‘I know.’

 _Something was different_. There hadn’t been any communication from the front lines in days, then men with each his own wildly different story stumble back half-dead. _They think the tribes are getting involved again; it’s the only explanation_.

The Holy Lands were their lands, and every so often, every so many years, they launched a counterattack in an effort to reclaim it from both sides of the war. They fought indiscriminately, attacking either the Crusaders or their enemy.

 _It was their land, theirs, of their family and blood. They were born on it. They would die in it_.

That’s what Eren’s first commander had told him. First rotation out, and Eren was sent into a massacre, enemies on two sides, one that was impossible to defeat, another that knew how to wipe them out. Attack them in the night, set fire to their supplies _drive them out_.

Levi could not escape in that. Anything that wasn’t claimed by the Crusaders would be controlled by the Tribes, enemies on both sides, no escape. Nowhere to breathe. The fighting would escalate and any escape would be dealt with without discussion, or trial. If Levi bypassed the Crusaders, he would never make it past the Tribes. Could never enter deeper into their lands.

He left; Thomas followed him.

‘It takes a week to get there,’ Thomas said, speaking quickly, ‘In a crash course, they could learn the strategy, and it’s not like any of us will have practice–’

‘Shut the fuck up.’

‘Eren,’ Thomas tried, reaching out but having his hand shrugged away. ‘Eren, _EREN!’_

Eren had been walking towards the Holy Lands. He stopped. ‘What.’

‘Go talk to him.’

‘No.’

‘Everyone thinks you’re fucking, who cares?’

He had heard it before; it still choked him with an acidic panic every time. ‘You _know_ why.’

Because there was always a rumour and not any proof. Because people said it, maybe even believed it, but there was no actual means of committing it. Levi slept in a tent with nearly fifty other men, and Eren slept in a tent with ten other Crusaders. And if the Bishop… If _he_ knew…

‘We might not come back from this one.’

‘Shut up,’ Eren said, but his voice was soft. ‘You’re acting like I’m in love with him.’

‘Wait, you aren’t?’

Eren sent him a withering glare, and Thomas smiled wide enough to eat shit. ‘Doesn’t mean you don’t care,’ he pointed out. ‘And try telling me you don’t.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You’ve been avoiding him.’

‘I haven’t.’

‘You’re such a fucking liar!’

Eren sighed, retraced his steps back into camp. He couldn’t feel his thighs, his hands, his cheeks. He had nothing to take his anger out on and it burnt him through. Worry was a poison he had overdosed on.

And he was drowning.

‘We could set up a boot-camp,’ Eren said, talking aloud to the air, a voice to his thoughts. ‘The trainers always go easy on them. We could–’

‘All twenty of them?’

Eren stopped. Fuck.

‘He wants me to watch them die.’

‘Honestly, if I didn’t know I’d say you were fucking paranoid.’

Eren reached up to tap on the tip of the scar on his chest, brushed his thumb along it and felt phantom pain. ‘I can’t care about them.’

‘No one can. Why do you think they’ve been so lax?’

Lax, yes, doing shitty chores that someone higher up, someone with a few years under his belt or perhaps just someone who had an idea had come up with. Collect water. Wash dishes. Do the laundry. Mend the clothes. Quilt the scraps. Weed the fucking training ring.

New recruits didn’t do chores. They were on a tight schedule and the longer they lived the more economical it was. They trained up their strength. They trained their endurance. If a recruit couldn’t fight for twenty-four hours by the time the first month was over, then he should be dead. No exceptions.

But no one had time to correct twenty individual’s stances. They had less time to teach everything from the basics upwards to a bunch of inexperienced, petty crooks.

So give them chores. Keep their hands busy. Keep them manageable. Keep as far away as possible and don’t ever, ever talk to them. They were fodder and there was no chance in hell that they would survive their first rotation out as a group. Try again when they’re individuals; try again when they have another three months before being rotated back out.

Not one of the Crusaders referred to them as people. They were a collective entity. The _Bishop’s Boys_ , they were called, useless and expendable, disposable. They would probably just be a body you have to step over, a body you might have time to pull away from the fray and bring home to burn into ashes and then bury in a mass grave.

That was a long-standing superstition; burning what bodies you could to ash and then burying it for good measure. A Crusader looked at one of them, any of those sixteen, and saw the enemy-to-be.

Eren made sure that Levi and the other three were kept separate, made sure that the supervisor and the trainer grouped them with the other recruits for the other brigades. Away from the Bishop’s Boys.

‘We need to spar with them.’

‘Ha, poor kids.’

Some of them were as old as Thomas, but everyone who had yet to see the blood battles in the Holy Lands held enough innocence to be called a kid. _The Uninitiated_.

‘Now,’ Eren clarified. ‘We don’t have time to waste.’

‘All twenty?’

He had to chew on his lip, bit it, sucked on the wound to trick his mind. Taste blood. Feel fear. Feel danger. If you were good enough with it, fear could make you calm. ‘If someone volunteers, they’re welcome to it.’

‘No one is going to _volunteer_.’

‘I don’t actually have any power.’

‘Bullshit,’ Thomas said, unsheathing his sword and holding it in front of him, then in a practiced swing drew the heavy blade up and across. If Eren were standing closer, his head would be hacked to the spine. ‘Everyone listens to you.’

‘No they don’t.’

‘Out of principle. But fuck’s sake, do you know how many actually _listen_? You’re a shitty leader, I’m not going to lie. But, man, everyone respects you. You know, aside from the sodomy thing. That’s a joke though, now.’

Eren scowled. ‘Shut up.’

‘You’re the only one who has a problem with it anymore. At least here.’

Yes, _here_ , in the camp. Where there were soldiers and blacksmiths that never left, who heard his sin and glared at him. That looked down at him and spat at him. Crusaders who had been in the camp too long copied them, got used to the old prejudice that had been wiped away on the front lines.

No one cares what you do there. Just don’t die. Just don’t kill the man fighting on the same side as you.

That didn’t mean that, even those in the brigade, tensed up whenever they noticed he had a boner, no matter how normal or regular they were. It didn’t mean that suspicion during peacetime didn’t run rampant. It didn’t mean that it was _okay_. It was just _overlooked_ , until it wasn’t, and Eren feared the moment he slipped up someone would be right there, whispering in the Bishop’s ear.

The Bishop wanted it. He wanted Eren to screw up.

‘Have you had offers? You must have, on the front lines?’

He felt the tips of his ears heat scarlet. ‘W-what? Why are you asking?’

‘You’ve seriously been a saint for _seven years_?’ Thomas said, blanching. He had sheathed his sword, but had extracted it from his belt and used it to support his slouching weight. ‘When the fuck did your balls up and drop off?’

‘You’re not funny.’

‘I’ve been your friend for years, Eren. Lighten up.’

 _Easy for you to say_.

‘So,’ Thomas said, wagged his eyebrows, winked unnecessarily. ‘How many?’

A lot.

Thomas leaned forward. ‘ _Who_?’

Eren kicked his heels and, as quickly as he could to get away, walked towards the training ring. Thomas caught up with him, nudged him with the back of his wrist. ‘Well?’

‘None of your business.’

‘Did you ever do anything with them?’

Eren faltered. Thomas burst out laughing. ‘Who? C’mon, man, you’ve got to tell me _who_?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘We’re going to die. Probably.’

‘That’s a shitty reason, and you know it.’

Thomas shrugged. ‘That’s the only one I’ve got.’

Eren groaned, tried to evade of the leach that fed off of the blood of Eren’s sexual escapades, it seemed. It wasn’t as if there was anything _to_ say, except when they forced themselves on him, in the dead of night, demanding to feel something, sometimes he didn’t say no.

Sometimes he wasn’t even sure who it was. Most of the time he never saw them again.

‘Can you just go get them?’

‘See? You haven’t even gotten permission from our commander. Is anyone going to question you? _No._ ’

‘Go.’

‘This is deflection.’

Eren could feel himself get flustered, a feeling he hadn’t gotten around to mastering, hell, hadn’t even _felt_ since before his recruitment. ‘Thomas.’

‘Yeah yeah yeah.’

Eren propped his arms up on the fence post, and buried his face in his arms.

* * *

The sun was being swallowed by the horizon and Levi could feel his pours drown in sweat. His hands were blistered hot, slick and swollen; he could hardly hold the sword, much less wield it. He breathed hard through is mouth, reached up and tried to wipe the sweat that was beading and dripping on his brow, but the chainmail on his arm was slick with moisture and it did nothing.

‘Don’t we get a _break_?’ Woerman asked, panting and crumbled in and seeking support on his knees.

‘No,’ Eren said, but his hair was drenched down just as badly as theirs was. ‘Great Trinity,’ he said, and set his broadsword down and pulled the tunic off and then the chainmail and then the linen shirt he had underneath.

Levi found great interest in his feet.

‘That’s,’ Munsell said, but had greater need for air at that moment. ‘That’s not fair.’

Eren laughed at them. Thomas laughed too, from where he was lounging on the barrier. ‘Exactly.’

‘Better pay close attention, Levi,’ Thomas called. Levi jerked his head up to send a glare but a great deal of steel came barrelling down on him in the next instant and he parried.

_This really isn’t fair._

Eren grinned at him, his hair messed and wet and his entire body flushed with health. His entire stomach rumbling with each breath, rippling down and down and down…

Levi shoved Eren’s sword away and lunged, dropping the sword down to cut away Eren’s counterattack and he lifted his foot, intending to kick that fucking stomach.

‘Don’t worry so much about attacking,’ Eren said, ‘Defend.’

‘Or kill them and be done with it,’ Levi said, readying himself again.

For whatever reason, Thomas started to laugh so loudly he choked on his own spittle and Eren looked like he had swallowed a stone. He looked out, peered into the setting sun, and without the scrutiny Levi found his eyes drifting down, down, down…

He gripped on the hilt of his sword, too heavy and long for his stature, and tried to swallow but found his tongue swollen.

‘It’s…’ Eren started, looked suddenly back over to Levi and caught him staring. Caught him, because in the next moment Eren’s face pinkened beyond the exerted flush. ‘It’s technically a secret.’

‘What is?’ Eirbringer took the distraction to drop his sword and fall to the ground in a heap.

Thomas walked towards them, put a hand on Eren’s shoulder and leaned into him until Eren’s knees buckled and he crossed his legs over to sidestep him. ‘The enemy.’

Eren glowered. ‘They’re dead.’

‘What do you mean _They’re dead_?’

‘What the hell do you think it means, Levi,’ Weorman said, exasperated and too tired to be as much of an asshole as he usually was. ‘They’ll be dead when we’re done with them.’

Thomas laughed, loud and rancorous, and Levi knew he was right to be suspicious.

‘No,’ Eren clarified. ‘They’re already dead.’

‘Wait, wait, w-wait,’ Munsell said, staggering forward with a hand in the air, trying to calm the situation that was his own denial. ‘That doesn’t make sense, I’m not hearing you right.’

‘Our enemy are alchemists who have made an army of corpses,’ Eren said, distant, but then he looked through the corner of his eye and found Levi staring. He swallowed. Levi swallowed, but that came to nothing.

‘Not dangerous in, uh, how they say,’ Thomas said, thinking to the air, ‘an individual capacity, of sorts.’

‘But you’ll be fighting for hours, and the fucker’s don’t sleep.’

Munsell opened his mouth, but Eren picked up his sword and nearly cleaved him in two. He would have, if Eren didn’t stop a hair’s breath away. ‘Think of this as boot camp.’

Levi licked his lips. ‘Why?’

Eren blinked, faltered. He looked to Levi and Levi felt unwanted hands and a long-forgotten voice whisper in his ear. He looked away.

‘The Holy Lands, not that the…’ Eren took a deep breath, ‘they are traditionally owned by three clans. Most of the time they’re held up deep in the east, but every so often they make a bid for their lands. An all-out assault.’

‘But wouldn’t-‘ Eibringer said, but stopped when Thomas burst out laughing again.

‘They’re morons, that’s why,’ Thomas said.

They didn’t answer the question, but Levi felt he understood anyway.

‘We’re their enemy just as much as the alchemists and their army are,’ Eren said, tapped the tip of his sword against his boot. Levi took the opportunity to swing his sword down on Eren.

Eren noticed it with surprise, stepped back and the damn thing was too heavy for Levi to change the trajectory so Eren had plenty opportunity to grab onto Levi’s wrist, press against the tendons.

‘There are smaller swords,’ Eren said, ‘wait I’ll go get one.’

‘ _Two_ ,’ Levi said, forcing his voice out and trying to ignore the conflicting sensations of Eren’s body heat radiating so close to him, close enough to see a beat of sweat culminate on the edge of Eren’s breast and fall, tracing its path down, down, down

and then he closed his eyes, and he was seven again.

He stepped away and glared.

Eren took in his anger, didn’t understand it, Levi could even see him want to apologise but then firmly decide not to. Like he thought of their age difference, thought better of asking, thought better of caring.

‘You want two?’

‘I’m used to it.’

‘Why didn’t you ask for one before?’

Levi shrugged.

Eren bit down on his annoyance, looked to Thomas, looked to the tent, orange in the last vestiges of the sun’s rays. ‘Fine. Break. Is anyone else not comfortable with their weapon?’

‘Um,’ Munsell said, ‘u-um.’

‘What?’ Eren was turned as he said it, lower body and shoulders twisted and Levi felt his blood jump and bubble and hiss and he tried to pet the feeling down by rubbing at his neck but it forced the fire downwards, warming him.

‘An axe?’

‘You want to use an axe? It’s not the same as cutting wood.’

‘I’m more comfortable with it.’

The half-naked Crusader sighed, breathing out and curling in and casting shadows on each hardened muscle in his abdomen.

Down, down, down

Eren left.

Levi left.

He dropped his sword and walked in the opposite direction, towards the currently unused chapel, abandoned because dinner was approaching and no one wanted to pray to God or the Trinity when their stomachs were clawing at them to do otherwise.

At least, that’s what Levi banked on. Betted on. Hoped on. It better be fucking empty because Levi was far too bothered and his dick far too hard to find a more appropriate venue, one Eren wouldn’t dare walk in to by accident.

One where _people wouldn’t look for him_.

The tent was bright and the air warm, fuzzy even. It glowed and it was peaceful, and Levi was going to pull out his dick and jerk it for all it was worth. Thinking, for fuck’s sake, of another man who was condemned to the Crusades for sodomy.

He closed the door and grabbed the wooden basin, filled with holy water, and dragged it until it sat in front of the handles. He picked a pew, hoped he wouldn’t get splinters, but figured God or whoever didn’t have to listen to his prayers when he was about to commit one hell of a sin in its house.

Not that Levi cared.

If he was honest, he picked the chapel because it seemed like the only appropriate place to do it. He breathed in through his nose, hiked the fucking chainmail up, looked right at the three pillar statues of Lady Maria, Lady Rose, and Lady Sina, and reached into his trousers.

His fingers cut past the hair, and when they touched the base of his dick, he sucked in a breath, closed his eyes, and stroked.

His mouth was open, he breathed through his nose, he licked his lips. He focussed on the sensation, of the building, up, down, he couldn’t reach everything so he pulled it out and in the cooler air of the chapel everything tingled and everything was on fire.

Eren was standing there, in front of him, rippled with muscle in ways Levi had never seen; that disciplined sort of physique. It had been marred with a long scar, white against his tan skin.

Levi imagined what it would taste like, had to bite down on his lower lip to keep from making any sounds.

He slowed his pace, took more care in the pressure. He imagined throwing Eren into a wall, holding him in place, holding him by the ridges of the muscles that extended from his core along his sides, up the back. He wanted to see that back, see it sweating and quivering and twitching. He could imagine it, he wanted it, pressure was building and he flitted between pounding into that body, staring at that back, and then, all of a sudden, in his mind’s eye Eren had flipped him, pushed him down, put his mouth on his–

He gasped, didn’t make a sound, couldn’t.

Eren, in front of him, on his knees and pinning him down, on the pew. The wood could give his ass as many splinters as it wanted, because Eren was looking up at him, smiling in a way that didn’t seem right, but was too good to worry about. He was licking his lips and about to lick Levi’s cock–

Eren left and the warmth left with him, and the moment before he came, exploded with what should have been contentment, he was seven and Eren was older and meaner and not Eren at all, grinning at him with missing teeth and rotting breath, and Levi was seven, and he couldn’t get away at all.

He caught his breath, looked at the mess, how it covered the pew, their books. He should have felt satisfaction, instead he felt dirty, violated.

This always happened. It…

He leaned forward, cursed himself, cursed it all. He kept _coming back_. He wouldn’t go _away_. His hands were always there, his touch always violating him and no amount of washing had ever rinsed it off. His voice, that voice, saying _it’ll be okay, I promise. You’ll like it._

He didn’t like it. He didn’t want to feel broken so he wouldn’t entertain the thought that his… _inclinations_ , call them what have you, were because of him. That Eren, God, Trinity, he was _beautiful_.

He wouldn’t let that monster tarnish the fact. He didn’t want it to.

It had been ten years.

Ten years since his mother ran into their burning home, screaming at him to stay there, please just _stay there, please Levi, please_

> ‘PLEASE,’ she shook him, waking him up from the nightmare of black smoke and black fire. ‘Don’t go in there, please, Levi, please, just stay here. Okay? Don’t go back in. Don’t _ever_ go back into that house!’
> 
> ‘Okay,’ he promised. He shouldn’t have promised.
> 
> She looked him in the eye, her hands shaking, her face burnt and blackened but still whole. Her eyes were brilliant against it all, but she was scared and it scared him. ‘Okay, okay, Levi I’ll be right back, just stay here. I love you,’ and she stood and bolted towards the door. Their home was burning, it was burning and his baby sister was burning with it.
> 
> For the first time, Levi wished he still had a father. Wished that he hadn’t been crushed underneath stone and wooden beams and _wished_ that it was something more than an accident.
> 
> He watched the house burn. Watched the fire lick the sky and exhale black clouds. Watched the town feebly try to drown it out with water, and then give up. He couldn’t understand why they gave up, why they focussed on the buildings next door, soaking them.
> 
> He waited for his mother.
> 
> It occurred to him she might have been screaming. But it was silent.
> 
> Then he was taken away, and he knew they were both dead.

He slammed the heel of his palm into his temple. He tried to block out the memories, tried to stop thinking about it.

He was shaking with exhaustion. He hadn’t slept in days, not properly. He found out about Eren’s sin and he couldn’t stop having nightmares. Couldn’t separate _sodomy sodomy sodomy_

And

He used the underside of the tunic to clean what he could.

_It’ll be okay, I promise. You’ll like it._

He stood, tucked himself back in, felt angry and empty. Hesitant. Undecided. Wary. Broken. What if he _was_ broken? What if that man’s touch had tainted him so horribly that now what he thought he wanted wasn’t what he actually wanted. What if…

He hit himself, enough to hurt, to bruise. He cleared his head, couldn’t, did, had to. He left, returned, found Thomas fighting with the other three and Eren with a new shirt and resting, drinking.

His instinct was to avoid him. To not look at him.

He found himself standing next to him.

‘You could be court marshalled for that,’ Eren said, took a drink. Levi opened his mouth, tried to say something. Couldn’t. He felt dirty. He looked to the fight, picked up the two swords sitting next to Eren and entered back into the training ring. With two swords he hooked Munsell’s axe and kicked him to the ground and then he blocked Thomas’ blade, locked it with his other sword, and knew how easy it would be to lift his elbow and break the blonde’s jaw.

He didn’t. But the rest of the day was filled with things he could do to permanently main the others, how he could kill them, how he could strip away honour and put them out of his misery. He could feel Eren’s gaze, burning him, burning in a way that might have been pleasant if…

 _It’ll be okay, I promise. You’ll like it_.

It was possible, Levi realised, kicking Woerman’s feet from underneath him and holding a sword to his throat until he surrendered. That… _his_ hands were there because for the first time there was actually somewhere for his urges to go. _Eren’s sin is sodomy_.

Eren’s sin is sodomy.

That night, and the night after, and the night after, Levi dreamed. _It’ll be okay_ , his dream said, in the dark of night and pulling his shirt up over his fat, undeveloped belly. _I promise._

A hand over his mouth, pressing, kissing, all in the dark.

 _You’ll like it_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh there will be errors, because I don't have time to edit it before tomorrow and then I'll have broken my update promise. So here is chapter four! Press the kudos button, write a comment, do nothing but secretly enjoy it? By now I'd assume you are invested in this - 25,000 words in, you should be! Well, maybe not. I hope you enjoyed it! Next chapter (again, either tomorrow or the day after) will be called: The Mass


	5. The Mass

Eren forgave himself for being so uncomfortable during their departure mass. He forgave himself because he managed to refrain from looking in Levi’s direction even once. He was uncomfortable because the main lesson of the two hour mass was the sins of sodomy, the abomination that it made men, how it corrupted their souls. How, just because they would face death and see their damnation, didn’t mean they had to fall so far.

It was amusing, however, to see how many men looked distinctly uncomfortable. It was a wartime secret that everyone knew. It was not one that was every spoken of, especially in front of the clergy. If you gave in and found comfort somewhere, you were to never speak of it again.

The pews were full, rammed full of thick-shouldered men and leaner boys, boys that hadn’t yet learned how to hold steel above their heads, wield it for hours on end. Boys who didn’t have to exhaust their adrenaline and then still find some means to keep fighting. To keep caring about death even after you lost feeling in your arms and your legs were dead weights that wouldn’t carry you far enough to retreat.

There was always a division, but until you knew the stakes, you didn’t speak of it. The only ones who knew were the ones who went on the front lines. Once you go there, you find your throat close up when they ask you _what’s it like_?

It’s not knowing if you’ll fall asleep in the night. It’s not knowing if you’re going to be fighting children or women or frail old men. It’s not knowing whether you’ll see a loved one in their faces, feel pity for the frail little girls that had somehow got caught up in all of this but you don’t _know how_. It’s not knowing whether or not you will see one of the brothers you fought alongside the day before on the other side of the battlefield, their eyes red, streaked with veins, pupils blown despite the constant high sun.

It was not eating enough, not properly, its raiding towns more grand than you could imagine, going south to kingdoms that have survived for millennia and being forced to take it, take it because you need the supplies and the Church ordered you to. It was being amazed at the obstinacy of the natives, the farmers that brought something to life in the dead ground, in the towns that held life despite the armies that tried to take it from them.

It was death, and dying, and fear, and fearing, and of course you wanted human contact, because that was the only comfort you could get. The only way you could sleep easy without having nightmares you could never remember.

But sodomy is a sin, being with another man, a sin. You’re damning your soul to hell, to burn with your brother who just wanted to give you a little bit of peace before your arms gave out on you and you were run through by the clumsiest lunge you could imagine. Laughable, because you were so well trained and it was such a pathetic way to die.

But there you were, and if the first lunge didn’t do the trick, the second would. A child's attacks - and if you’re unlucky you can watch them do it. Dead apathy, not a spark of recognition or remorse. Not a spark of life. You die; your own failure killed you.

And the priest had the gall to preach against sodomy, like it actually _mattered,_ like he was actually _right_.

But he was, where it counted.

Eren closed his eyes, and there was fire.

He opened them, and there was hell.

He grumbled out of the spite of it all, but when he tried to slouch Thomas elbowed him in the lowest rib, and he corrected his rebellion and blanked his face, so that it couldn’t betray him.

They were commanded to stand, they touched their forehead three times, they collectively spoke Latin phrases that Eren had never the pleasure of understanding in their entirety. He knew their context, though, had been told to him by good old Armin.

The old man had once been the magistrate of the neighbouring town, who retired to the countryside and took up a cottage and paid Eren’s father dues for rent. His wife had died in childbirth along with his infant son, and he retired. He hired a servant boy, a family friend, to take care of the farm work. A infuriating man, who was too fucking  _obstinate_ to...

_Sodomite_.

‘Eren,’ Thomas said through the corner of his mouth. Eren lifted his brows out of the glare and nodded his thanks.

They were commanded to sit, they touched their forehead three times, they collectively spoke the Latin phrases. Eren’s gaze wandered as he sat, caught a glimpse of Levi between the gap between his arm and his side, and tried not to swallow.

He had done something wrong.

Or perhaps he had started to take for granted how often people listened to him. How much they, dare he say it, _liked_ him. They ostracised him, sometimes, but if he had something to say – some story, the table would hush and look at him. If he had an order on the battlefield, it wouldn’t matter what the commander said, they would listen to _him._

Because the commander was usually a young fool who just wanted to live, and no one dared court marshal him. If they did, then where would they be?

He had probably become lenient in having others respond to him, look up to him, even if they kept their distance.

He tried not to feel… _abashed_ , he supposed. Tried not to, because Levi didn’t have to do anything. He didn’t have to like him, he didn’t have to befriend him and he didn’t have to _talk_ to him, if he didn’t want to. Levi didn’t have to do anything aside from what Eren ordered him to do during their expedited boot camp.

Eren had just become coddled by the easy relationship Levi had offered him; had become too acquainted and had taken too much for granted.

He could guess the change. It didn’t take a genius so figure it out. Thomas didn’t want to say it, kept offering a myriad of excuses as to why the boy had suddenly turned so cold when before everything had been so easy.

Eren missed it. Missed it, because it was something…

It didn’t matter how he felt about it. It was gone now. Levi had obviously found out the truth and was disgusted and that was the end of it. The best that he could do is hope Levi listened to him when he tried to instil a month’s worth of tactics and strategy into his head.

It worked out better this way, anyway.

_What a liar._

He hadn’t felt this defeated since his first time on the battlefield and he had lost the three friends he made during training. The only three who would give him the time of day, who didn’t see him as some sort of depraved rapist.

Dead. A day in and they were all slaughtered.

This wasn’t as dire, not anywhere close, but he still felt thick acid hang underneath his heart every time Levi would avert his eyes when he had decided that he had been staring too long. Minutes, maybe, and this is when Eren was demonstrating guerrilla tactics, using Thomas as a dummy. He couldn’t even look at him long enough to watch a demonstration that could save his life.

So Eren had Thomas go and show Levi the manoeuvre again, afterwards.

It had hurt the most after the first day of their training. Eren didn’t realise how much he had counted on Levi’s brutally honest persona until Levi stopped talking altogether. He spoke seldom to the other three, but they didn’t seem adversely affected by his taciturn responses.

That was probably how often he spoke to them usually.

Which meant that Eren had been an exception. And now he was an aversion. It…

He breathed deeply through his nose, tried to tell himself it was alright, tried to care what the priest was saying, couldn’t. Couldn’t to any of it. He knew he couldn’t cry, didn’t want to, not really, but his body heaved and was pressed with a sadness he wished he could expunge.

They were commanded to stand, they touched their forehead three times, they collectively spoke the Latin phrases. A sermon, a story of the three ladies, touched by the grace of the One God, the pillars that supported the great Empire and all of its subjects.

Women who inspired men by the word of their God, that towns and communities and societies banded together and built the great pillars that sustained a collected entity that was first a country, and then an empire, and then aged until they were grand civilizations and their Empire was sick with corruption.

The last part was not said, but through the years Eren had learned to get creative in his interpretation.

They were commanded to sit, they touched their forehead three times, they collectively spoke the Latin phrases. They were dismissed.

* * *

If Levi’s spine were wired with electricity, pulsing and burning with a heat that jolted every nerve in his body, he would not be in as much conflicted agony as he was now. That wire, of course, was figurative, but it coiled deep in his stomach and electrified his skin.

He forced himself out of the habit a long time ago from finding men attractive in this way. Of feeling it, deep, somewhere in his pelvis that could rocket up into his throat at any given moment. He could never detach _that_ man’s breath, his scaling fingers – with flesh so dry and cracked it flaked and peeled off into blisters, carving around sharp bones and dipping into yellow fingernails.

It was easier to ignore them, ignore them and avoid those memories. It was easy, because no one as poor as he was had the opportunity to be healthy enough for Levi to deem attractive enough – _sanitary_ enough.

His gazes followed the rich merchant sons, the young gentleman who had a future in whatever trade their fathers paved for them, who had money and no reason to look twice at him.

It was easy, because they were unobtainable. They were an ideal, a dream he could contend himself with. He found alcohol, and the bodies that found him could become those boys – sometimes stayed those boys, but not often.

They always became that man.

After awhile, Levi gave up trying. Tried women, found them too soft, like he would break them in an instant. They were too delicate for him too touch, and it didn’t make sense to him that other men would want to. That they assumed they had some inherent right to.

They were the innocence that he had torn from him, even when they were cruel and conniving. Even when they were admirable in their crimes. They were still something that shouldn’t be touched, something _other_ that only attracted his attention because women, in his mind, would run inside a burning home twice to save her children. A woman who would die, burn alive with her baby rather than abandon it.

They were a mother. A sister.

It was sickening that other men wanted to consume them the way that they did. Wanted to hurt them, claim them.

He tried it once, with a woman. He was fourteen and he had no concept of how to live. She was older, she offered, for pay. He wanted to fix himself, rid himself of that man.

It was the only time he cried, but he couldn’t. Kissing her brought his mother’s face to mind, her body was soft and like home, but not something that should be tainted by him. She folded him into her lap and pet his hair and whispered sweetness into his ear and he cried for the first time since the fire.

Eren was different.

He wasn’t a town boy that would walk by with his friends, whole and fit and glowingly beautiful. He wasn’t one of the filth that you could find, at the edges of society. He wasn’t diseased and tainted and such an instant trigger that Levi was more likely to smash their rotting faces into the wall and break their bones further.

Eren swung a sword that was nearly as tall as Levi, he could hack a straw dummy practically in half with one swing and expert control, and the idiot would immediately turn to Levi, a bright grin on his face like he was some sort of puppy that wanted to show off a new trick.

He was 36, but Levi wasn’t 17 to him.

It tied everything up in knots and every time he tried to convince himself to just _say something, do something_ , those knots froze, twisted, grew thorns and all he could think of was _what if it comes back what if he comes back_.

He didn’t want to share Eren with his nightmares. Wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. Didn’t know how to react when Eren would explain something, and look at him, every so often excited and thrilled and so breathtaking that Levi was convinced that his libido had been shucked to the side and was now clawing back like some depraved monster.

Ever since he found the truth about the sin that had condemned Eren to this life, Levi found himself more attuned to the rumours that surrounded the two of them. How Levi was his fuck buddy, his toy, how the reason he got so much attention from him was because he was sucking his cock and that was the end of it.

He realised just as quickly that this was just talk. No one actually thought it was true, or perhaps they didn't care in the same capacity that the priests and holy men did. He realised it when Thomas had caught the end of one of those sentences, laughed, and clapped the gossiper on the back and continued on _Yeah, I heard he’s got the priest on the side too._

And everyone laughed, good natured. They even called Eren over when he had come into the tent, food in hand, and asked him how good the priest was, if he was the reason the old codger was so uptight.

Eren had rolled his eyes and waved it off. Thomas whacked the owner of that comment upside the head and left.

But comments like that had certainly fuelled Levi’s imagination. Made him see every excited glimmer - made him take notice every time Eren’s breath would shallow out for a minute when Levi was fighting him. Made it painfully obvious that when Levi was mute in his own fucking issues, Eren’s warm demeanour was hardening, turning in on itself. His face fell every time Levi couldn’t think of something to say, because there was so much pressure on his spine and in his gut to both _do something_ and _do nothing_. To keep things as they were, or to…

To actually do something. God, he wanted to.

Then he fell asleep at night, and it wasn’t Eren’s face he saw, wasn’t his body that was touching him, caressing him, it was yellow teeth and blistered skin and a diseased mouth catching on his soft flesh, sucking it red and bruised, violating him and burning the experience so raw into his mind he had woken up sweating and shaking, exhausted, every day.

Several times a night.

They were dismissed from the service and Levi had bolted before anyone else could leave. He found the trough and cupped his hands in it, splashed his face and considered just drowning himself and getting it over with. He sat down, stared at his hands, tried to get his hammering heart to calm down.

He knew he wanted to. Knew it explicitly after that first day during their training together. Had considered it when he learned of Eren’s sin, because never in his life would he have assumed that someone like Eren… that he was actually… that Levi could look at him and think beyond just how he looked.

Levi was very good at using a person’s appearance and fabricating a personality into it, a character that was not the image, so it didn’t feel wrong. So that it didn’t feel like he was raping someone else in his head. He was so used to assuming that the men he found attractive, those boys with the bright smiles and that healthy glow, those boys would marry beautiful women who would become mothers and have daughters.

Levi knew it, but it hadn’t really occurred to him that someone who found… someone who preferred men to women could be anything but damaged, deranged, diseased, _a monster_.

He was elated. He was terrified. He knew he was going to fuck up. He knew he was going to back out. He never considered himself a coward until now. He had never planned for a future where there was someone who could reciprocate. Something good.

Something whole.

He lifted his head and his the back of his skull against the wooden post that held up the stable. He needed to get that man out of his head. Needed to get his taint out of his body.

He didn’t want to let the bastard pet him in the dark recesses of his mind, didn’t want to have his ghost visit him in his sleep. He didn’t bile to rise in his throat the same time he felt the urge to try kissing Eren.

Eren.

He closed his eyes, scratched absently at a scab on his forefinger. Everything was a mess, a warring dichotomy of emotions between want and revulsion.

He could very well die in a week.

Roaring blood pumped, echoed in his eardrum and drowned out the sounds of the horses. He could die in a week. Anything could happen, it didn’t matter how good you were. He climbed to his feet, his stomach a solid mass that had disrupted both his digestive and his bowel movements.

He might die in less than a week. He might not.

But he could.

He could feel chipped fingernails on his neck, cutting into his throat, could feel something tugging in his stomach to stop, go backwards, don’t do this. It was a useless tumour of fear, and he carried on, searching blindly for Eren.

He found him just outside the chapel, always felt slightly amused at how he had desecrated it.

Eren was talking to Thomas, who was glaring at the priest and needed Eren to hold on to his arm to keep him from storming into idiocy. Levi planted himself next to them, right in Eren’s line of sight, and the surprise of it made Eren let go and for Thomas to falter and nearly trip.

‘Levi,’ Eren said, taking a step back in order to check his surroundings. ‘What is it?’

Levi opened his mouth, found all the words he could say at the bottom of his gut, far out of reach of his tongue. He scowled at Thomas instead, who tried to psyche him out by lunging in jest.

‘Um,’ Eren said, scrutinizing Levi’s face. He turned to Thomas. ‘Go see what the commander’s plans are for tomorrow.’

‘If you want me to piss off,’ Thomas said, deadpan, ‘then tell me to piss off.’

‘Thomas.’

A moment.

‘How the fuck does that keep working?’ But the blond had asked the air and was already walking off.

‘What is it?’

Levi tried again, and this time his lips didn’t feel adequate for language. Fuck it. He leaned back on his heel and assured himself that no one was close enough to hear. ‘Can you meet me by the wall tonight?’

Eren processed it, ‘they’ll be extra strict tonight, in case of deserters,’ and came to the wrong conclusion.

‘No,’ he cut himself off; it was hard to talk, with those disgusting nails digging their memories into his neck. He scowled into the sunlight, then grabbed Eren’s wrist and pulled him to the far side of the chapel, into the shade.

‘Ah,’ Eren said, stepping away and apologising with his hands. ‘They’ll get the wrong idea.’

What an _idiot_.

‘I just,’ he wished there was something restricting his neck, because he needed to loosen the pressure. ‘I wanted to… apologise.’

Not exactly.

‘What for?’

‘For… being… distant, I guess.’

Eren paused, blinked, started to shake his head. ‘You don’t have anything to apologise for–’

‘Shut up,’ Levi said, ‘I do. I’m apologising, so shut the fuck up and accept it. I’m not going to give it again.’

‘Okay,’ Eren said. ‘I’m sorry if it makes you uncomfortable.’

‘What?’

‘The, uh,’ Eren looked away, his muscles stiff and jerky. ‘The… sodomy. It had been consensual, if that means anything.’

There was something pained in his words, but Levi ignored it for the more pressing fact that Eren was apologising in the first place. ‘That’s not… Fuck,’ Levi backed himself into the wall and put a hand over his eyes. ‘That’s not… why…’

Just _say_ it.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes,’ he said, growling, even removed his hand to glare at Eren. ‘I… when I was seven, I…’

Eren considered against speaking, ended up opening and closing his mouth and settled on listening instead, but Levi’s throat had closed up on him. ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Eren said, deciding for him and even backing away. Levi lunched and caught him clumsily on his shirt, fist right underneath his ribcage.

‘I’m not ignoring you.’

‘It’s okay,’ Eren said, but still didn’t dare touch him, even to remove the hand. ‘I understand. I’m used to it.’

‘Shut up! Just,’ he let go and scratched an itch on his nose. ‘Just…’

‘If this is about tomorrow,’ Eren began.

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘Then what?’

After mass was breakfast, and breakfast was guaranteed the best meal of the day because it was the hardest thing to fuck up. Levi couldn’t see anyone, didn’t assume anyone would be around.

It was restricted, his breathing. Eren looked at him like he was going to drop dead and even placed a concerned hand on his shoulder. ‘Levi, what’s wrong?’

God, he felt like he was going to throw up.

He couldn’t even feel the fingers that reached to grab the neck of Eren’s shirt.

Footsteps.

His blood froze to a clot. Levi let go and pressed his body as close to the wall and as far away as Eren as he could get in a second. Eren reached up to touch the skin that Levi’s hand had grazed, straightened, and looked to the goddamn cockblock.

‘Father,’ Eren said, nodding.

The old man looked between the two of them. Eren’s expression hardened to murder. ‘He is worried about tomorrow.’

‘You should see me if you have any fears, my son,’ the priest said to Levi.

‘I have nothing to say to you,’ Levi said, knew the old man wasn’t about to leave them alone, so he gave up and left for the dining tent, Eren following at the respectable distance of an alienated stranger.

They were nearly there, when Levi turned on his heel and Eren nearly crashed into him. ‘I’m… the same,’ he said, before anything _else_ could go wrong.

‘The same as what?’

Levi clenched and unclenched his fist, wishing that Eren didn’t have the tendency to be so… _dense_ at subterfuge language. ‘I… my preferences,’ Levi began, looked to Eren, hoped the idiot would get it before he had to try to stich together the fleshy remains of chopped up words into something so painfully obvious. ‘They’re the same as yours.’

He could see the question forming; Eren was ridiculously transparent. He was seriously going to _hit_ the infuriating fuck.

Then Eren’s shoulders dropped and he stepped back, half a step, then walked straight past Levi and into the dining tent without a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there is chapter 5! I initially planned more to happen during their conversation, but they dictated it for me. A lot of tensions should arise next chapter, so watch out for that! The next chapter will be called: The Journey.


	6. The Journey

It was a sea of blood on horseback, creeping along the dead, cracked dirt in a lazy wave that didn’t have enough tidal force to wipe away anything. The Crusaders that made up the vanguard bore a weight heavy enough to sink their shoulders close to their hearts, caging their weariness with flesh and bone.

‘We call them the Bishop’s Boys, eh,’ Thomas said, his reigns loose and allowing his mare to follow at the pack at her own leisurely pace. He was leaning on the back of the saddle, fingers gripping the ties that held his bedding together. He was looking to the back, beyond their heads, to where the sixteen extra recruits were being carted in with the supplies. ‘You didn’t get friendly with them, did you?’

Munsell swivelled in his seat, but was too nervous on his mare to not make her jitter with the movement. ‘No?’

‘Good,’ Thomas said, ‘they most likely won’t come back.’

Eibringer looked over, looked to the horizon, and said nothing. Levi couldn’t blame him. It was a hard thought to swallow that there was a conspiracy against them, one that was enacted by the Crusaders but dealt by the Grand Bishop. It was something else entirely to hear about it, to know that men who should be fighting to protect each other and the Empire had written them off before they even arrived.

‘Sorry,’ Eren said, but he didn’t look behind them. He was only there because Thomas had reached over and grabbed the reigns from Eren and tied them to the horn on his saddle. ‘It’s best not to think about it.’

‘It’s happened once before,’ Thomas said. ‘You were there, weren’t you, Eren?’

Levi watched the way his shoulders rose, fell. ‘I was,’ he paused then, turned to Thomas and frowned. ‘Actually…’

‘What?’

‘I never thought of it before.’

‘What,’ Thomas repeated, his voice flattening.

‘My first expedition out, the Tribes were trying to reclaim their land. First time in ten years, apparently. There were,’ Eren looked to the Bishop’s Boys in the back. ‘There were too many to train back then, too.’

‘What, you mean they know?’

‘Possibly.’

Thomas sat back, and contemplated the suggestion. ‘Yeah, I guess. That could make sense. If they had spies or something and found out about their movements.’

Eren nodded, looked to the Bishop’s Boys once again, caught Levi’s gaze, swallowed and looked away.

Levi was done with his shit. He glared at his back, glared at his face, made it obvious that he didn’t appreciate Eren’s juvenile response to his confession. It was hard enough to say in the first place, hard enough to admit that he maybe wanted something enough to risk prolonged nightmares. It was embarrassing in a way that Levi couldn’t remember feeling before.

He didn’t like it.

So he glared at Eren.

The encampment disappeared over the horizon and the Pillar Maria was only a lump attached to the fading mountain ridges. As it faded, the strict positioning of each brigade disbanded and became more fluid, and as soon as Levi noticed this, he forced his mare to trot up next to Thomas and untied Eren’s reigns from the horn.

Thomas watched him do it, eyes heavy with understanding, and then he winked. Levi tried to give him a glare that would inspire the shit-eating grin that was growing on the blonde’s face to shrivel up and die.

It did no such thing.

Instead, Thomas gripped the reigns to stop Eren from trying to force his horse away, directing her with his thighs. He handed them to Levi, and fell back just long enough to chase the other three ahead of them.

‘Levi.’

‘If they care, I’ll kick their asses.’

Eren’s mouth twisted, pained. He looked ahead. Munsell tried to look behind him but Thomas called him to attention, started spewing some military tactic to keep them busy. ‘He doesn’t care.’

‘It’s not about him.’

Levi gripped the collected leather in his hands, heard his tendons snap as his grip tightened. ‘Then what’s it about?’

Eren swallowed his lips, dragged a tongue along his teeth, and stalled long enough to tear away at Levi’s patience. So he pulled the reigns to the right and forced a harsh side-step that was cruel to their horses but brought Eren back to the here and now.

‘Because of Bishop Reiss,’ Levi said, guessing.

‘ _Grand_ Bishop,’ Eren said, sighing, ‘if you were paying attention.’

‘What does he have to do with anything?’

Eren leaned back and looked upwards, eyes tracing over the cloud formations ahead. ‘There was a monastery on my father’s lands. He was religious, of course, so he protected without question.’

That got to Levi. He almost laughed. He truly had a type. ‘You’re a Lord?’

Eren shook his head. ‘A bastard. My mother was a dancer at the Red Circus. They got stuck nearby when a blizzard hit further north unexpectedly, so they had to wait. They didn’t have enough money to pay my father rent for use of his lands and protection, so they offered him my mother.’

A whore, Levi figured that out the moment he said dancer. The Red Circus itself was infamous for its exotic shows – it falsified tales of the Crusades and the Crusaders, of the women they encountered. Levi had never seen one, but they were talked off as a sinful Eden, an opiate of an experience.

‘They found out she was pregnant before the snow could melt. They left her behind and my father took her in. She became a servant.’

‘Not his mistress?’

‘My father’s wife brought her to the Pillar Rose,’ Eren said. ‘I must have been four at the time. She pushed her off the wall.’

Levi looked over to Eren, but there was only an echo of sadness there. Eren looked over, sideways. ‘I was four, Levi, I don’t know if I remember anything real about her.’

‘What happened then?’

Eren shrugged. ‘Nothing. That’s all I was told. But my father’s wife was the wife of one of the Five Lords of Rose. I don’t think they batted an eye when she pushed one of her own servants off the wall.’

‘What happened to _you_ ,’ Levi clarified.

‘Nothing. I never lived in the castle. I was never permitted to play with my father’s children. I served them. I would have continued to serve them my entire life.’

Levi took care to absorb what he was being told. Tried to wrap his head around such politics. Did, because it was easy to imagine human depravity. ‘And the Bishop?’

‘He was younger, then, when I was born he was just a priest. I’m quite certain he convinced her to throw my mother off the wall, because when she returned without her and I tried to ask where my mother was, she told me that I should pray to Father Reiss, for loving a whore.

‘It’s a long story,’ Eren said, interrupting his tale.

‘I don’t care.’

‘It’s not going to change anything,’ Eren said, ‘I couldn’t if I wanted to.’

Levi could feel his heart beating, right in his jugular. ‘But you do want to.’

It was easy to see in the morning light, the blush that bit at Eren’s ears. ‘I didn’t say that.’

Levi swallowed. ‘There isn’t anything else to do,’ he said finally.

‘Is that you trying to tell me to continue?’

‘What else?’

Eren exhaled noisily, let go the pretence of proper posture and leaned back on his hands. ‘I went to the monastery and I found him, and I asked him what she had meant when she said that. He took me aside and told me how my mother sold her body to tempt men in breaking their vows. That she was a temptress that knew she was going to hell so she wanted to bring as many people down with her. That I was going there myself unless I repented.’

‘Did you?’

‘I’ve been told that so many times, you know. I don’t even remember going to him, but he told me enough times. I remember her words because I repeated them to myself until I was old enough to understand them.’

‘Eren,’ Levi said.

‘I needed to repent, so I became a chapel boy. I clung near Father Reiss’ skirts until he was promoted to Bishop.’ Eren laughed, unamused. ‘Did you know that there are ranks? Your title is Bishop but there are cardinals and archbishops and a whole ton of other shit. But to the people they are just _Bishop_ Reiss. Until they become Grand Bishop, and they think they’re fucking God.’

‘How old were you?’

‘When he left? Twelve.’

Levi looked to his hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ but he didn’t know how to sound sincere, didn’t know how to properly express it, so it came out flat.

‘For what?’

‘For being so stupid.’

Eren laughed, then. ‘I was stupid, wasn’t I?’ He licked his lips. ‘A few years later, the magistrate from the town nearby retired. His wife had died during childbirth – not that surprising, actually, you know. She was too old to have kids. It was supposed to be a miracle. I can remember when Annie showed up in the kitchen and told the cooks to make a cake, just for the occasion. It was a miracle.’

‘Annie?’

‘The Head Housekeeper. She was scary as fuck. Never let me get away with anything.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘Probably still there. She had a soft spot for Armin.’

‘Armin?’

Eren shook his head, better memories making him smile. ‘The magistrate. They had such a funny relationship. If I hadn’t known Annie for years I would have assumed she hated him.’

‘But she didn’t?’

Eren shook his head. ‘I don’t think anything happened between them, but what do I know? They weren’t that close in age but it wasn’t impossible.’

‘My mother was nearly twenty years younger than my father,’ Levi supplied. ‘His first wife had been so sickly they never had kids, and then she died. They were neighbours.’

‘Your parents?’

Levi nodded, but didn’t want to say any more. ‘How did you get recruited?’

It took so long for Eren to answer that Levi was convinced he had set himself on silence. ‘The magistrate brought with him a servant, someone to do the farm work and chores around the house. He did it as a favour to his older sister, because she had married up and her new husband didn’t want him around.’

There was a pitch to Eren’s voice, and Levi wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the rest of the story.

‘We hated each other. The magistrate had rented an outlying cottage on my father’s grounds, so he was always there. Everything he said just… pissed me off. It was a fucking talent.’

He was the one. Somehow, Levi just knew. Knew by the heartbroken expression on Eren’s face. He was quite sure he didn’t want to hear this story.

‘We were wrestling in the barn one day, because he had been mucking the stall reserved for Armin’s horse, and I was hiding from Annie because I wasn’t in the mood to do laundry. He called me lazy, called me a bastard and… something else happened instead.’

He didn’t want to hear this.

‘We were probably fourteen at the time.’

Eren had only been a Crusader for seven years. Levi quickly did the math in the head and knew he was inadequate.

‘We hid it well. We got so used to hiding it everyone ignored what we gave away. Anyway, sometime when I was twenty-seven Bishop _Reiss_ was promoted to _Grand Bishop Reiss_ , and my father decided to hold a banquet in his honour. Invited him at his behest.’

The math didn’t add up.

‘I think he was suspicious then, because he made it a point to make sure I was constantly waiting at his beck and call. Fucker. I remember how… terrified I was, when he asked me where my wife was. That the way to redemption _wasn’t_ going to be offered to me if I followed in my mother’s blasphemous ways.

‘I broke it off with him that night,’ Eren said, his voice pitched deep in his throat. ‘S-sorry, can we not talk about this?’

For now.

They continued to ride. ‘You should go and listen to him,’ Eren said, nodding to Thomas. ‘It’s important.’

‘My ass is going numb and I’m pretty sure I need to take a shit,’ Levi said. ‘There’s no way in hell I’m going to listen to any of those idiots.’

A laugh broke and spilled out from Eren’s lips. ‘It _is_ important.’

Levi gave up. ‘If you really want me to leave, I will.’

Eren’s mouth hardened. He tried to say yes, but faltered. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t want that.’

He watched his mare’s flank. Laughed a little, to himself. ‘My father’s wife had this dog. It was such a fucking stupid thing. Massive, probably taller than you on it’s hind legs,’ Levi glared, and Eren grinned at him stupidly, ‘we were ordered to bathe it. My father wasn’t home at the time, so, we,’ he broke off with a laugh, ‘we stole red dye from Annie’s cupboards and washed it with that. It turned out pink.’

It wasn’t that funny of a story, but Levi found himself smiling along with the good memories.

Levi didn’t have many.

‘Once,’ Eren continued, like it wasn’t a stab right in Levi’s sternum every time he spoke about the boy Eren had been in love with. ‘Once we snuck into the manor at night, god we were so stupid. The main house was at a banquet in Pillar Rose so we went to my father’s bed chambers and we pretended we were them.’ He scowled, but it was fond. ‘I was his wife. But,’ he shrugged, and looked over to Levi conspiratorially, ‘we made good use of her clothes.’  

Levi tried to vent the pain on the reigns, but it wasn’t enough. ‘Please, don’t.’

‘What?’

It was selfish, and stupid. ‘Nothing.’

Eren’s elation died, and Levi hated himself for it. ‘Why?’

That goddamn question. ‘I don’t know.’

Eren saw nothing but past, painful memories. ‘I… do.’

‘Do what?’

‘Want to.’ He let out a long, shaky breath that stole his strength and made him curl into himself. ‘God, I want to.’

Levi found himself grinning before he realised what his muscles had involuntarily pulled in to. ‘Then why…’

‘I can’t.’

‘Bullshit.’ Eren looked up, and Levi felt him see every dark corner he wanted to hide away. Levi scowled, hoping it would put up enough of a wall that Eren was blind to everything ugly. ‘Fuck the Bishop.’

‘You don’t understand.’

If Levi could decide Eren was worth it, worth trying to fight… fight the memories, the nightmares, to just _try_ , then Eren could try too. ‘No, I don’t.’

‘You’re young.’

‘That’s a shitty excuse.’

‘It’s not an excuse,’ Eren said, ‘I was with him for almost your entire life.’

 _Worthless, worthless, worthless_.

How was Levi supposed to compete with that?

‘Forget it,’ Levi said, dropping Eren’s reigns and trotting ahead. He couldn’t… he couldn’t hear it. If that hope was torn from him, there was nothing stopping the nightmares from consuming him. He couldn’t hear about how amazing this man was, how fifteen years wasn’t even half the time that Eren had been in the Crusades.

How could he compete with a memory that good? He had nothing to offer.

‘Levi,’ Eren said, voice harsh and he reached out and stole Levi’s reigns and forced him to a stop. ‘It’s,’ _what_. ‘That’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean… it’s not because of him.’

‘Then _what_?’

The brigade behind them were beginning to get too close for their conversation, so Eren forced them forward at a painfully brisk pace. Levi’s balls were not thanking him.

‘It’s because of the Bishop,’ Levi continued for him, not wanting to be in this conversation. He didn’t do well with lists as to why he wasn’t worth risking it for.

‘Always,’ he took in a deep breath; his hand reached out, then caged back in by his own fucking indecisiveness. ‘He had suspicions, after that banquet. He had irrefutable proof a year later. He… We never properly broke it off, because he wouldn’t let me. Then a year later and the Bishop shows up unannounced. He’s there to see _me_. He says he’s so disappointed, but he’s not surprised. But because it’s me, he’s determined to save me.

‘I didn’t know what he was saying. All I knew was that he couldn’t stop smiling at me and petting my head and telling me he always knew he needed to save me and now he finally could, because I had finally fallen. He took me to the court, and… he had tied him up to a pyre and one of his men had already set it on fire and he forced me to watch.’

Levi couldn’t blink.

‘There was wind,’ Eren continued, blind to the Holy Lands, to Levi, ‘he couldn’t breath in the smoke and die, like he told me you could. It took forever.’

Eren refused to say anything more, but his story wasn’t done, and Levi couldn’t sit back and allow Eren to see his lover’s body burn in his mind’s eye. ‘Then what?’

Eren blinked, slow, heavy. ‘He asked me if I repented my sins. I told him to go to hell. He doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. Probably the only religious man I’ve met who doesn’t abhor blood. But Reiss… Reiss likes it. He said he was baptising me, every time he punctured a hole with…’ Eren closed his eyes, breathed through his nose, but his chest didn’t expand. ‘I had to say yes, I’d repent. It only took a week and I was begging him to save me. A week after he murdered…’

Eren’s breathing was dangerously shallow. Levi pulled his horse closer and reached out a hand to steady Eren’s swaying body, but Eren swatted his hand away. ‘I couldn’t do anything but grovel to the man who made me watch him burn, who burned him. He didn’t have to do anything to anyone else. I was just… _weak_.’

‘Eren,’ Levi said, but had nothing to say.

Eren couldn’t look him in the eye. ‘That’s why.’

‘Eren,’ Levi tried again, but still found nothing. Eren forced his horse into a short canter until he was beside Thomas, and then he broke off formation and galloped ahead.

The guilt Levi felt strung him up by his neck in a tight noose, and refused to let go.

* * *

Everything glowed with firelight. Everything included Thomas’ stern disapproval. ‘Eren.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

He sighed. ‘Fine.’

Eren pushed the poker, breaking apart the glowing log in a burst of sparks. ‘I can’t let him hurt him.’

‘You’re right, because the Tribes and the dead fucks are going to let him waltz out without a scratch.’

Eren glared. ‘Levi will survive.’

‘And you can guarantee that? Really?’

Eren pressed into the glowing ember, pressing and making it squeal underneath the pressure. He dropped the stick, hit his knee, hit his face and stood and kicked the poker into the fire to burn. ‘I can’t! I refuse to act like either of us is going to die, because if we don’t…’

Thomas pat at the ground. ‘I get it. Sorry.’

‘I won’t let him die.’

‘You can’t guarantee it.’

‘On my life,’ Eren stressed, ‘I will. He won’t die.’

‘Whatever you say, Eren.’

* * *

The second day of their journey Levi felt like the living dead and could completely understand why their enemy would want to annihilate them all. His nightmares molested him in the dark, but it was more of a comfort to wake up the endless oblivion of light and celestial bodies. He spent most of the night staring at them, too scared to sleep.

Not that he’d admit to it.

He watched Eren, and Eren stared back. It was a strange arrangement that they had been enacting for hours now. The other Crusaders in their brigade had begun to make jokes.

They were ignored.

Levi challenged Eren, but knew he couldn’t change his mind, not by arguing circles. Some moments, he was tempted to tell Eren the reason why _this_ was hard for him, too. Why the only obstacle between them wasn’t Eren’s spectre, but Levi’s too.

That Levi was fighting him for Eren.

But Levi had stayed awake all night thinking of clever things to say, and when dawn had risen and they were once again jostled on their balls, Levi couldn’t find the syntax to string together any of those sentences.

Eren gave in, first.

‘You look like you’re going to slit my throat,’ Eren said, ‘stop.’

‘I didn’t sleep last night.’

‘You don’t sleep _most_ nights,’ Woerman grumbled, caught in the middle of it all.

‘What?’ Eren said, finally seeing him. ‘Why?’

Levi couldn’t look at him. ‘I just can’t.’

 _Liar_.

‘Is is about the war?’

Did he really think that was enough of a concern to dirupt Levi’s sleeping pattern? His face must have read something along those lines, because Eren looked appropriately abashed. ‘It’s not…’

‘No.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Eren tried. Woerman looked like he was going to say something he shouldn’t, but Thomas clicked his tongue and gave him a slow warning, shaking his head from side to side, and Woerman was enough of a coward to be scared of him.

‘It’s not you.’

Eren took that in, digested it; was an idiot. ‘I’m still sorry.’

Levi couldn’t handle hearing apologies. The right people never seemed to say them and the blameless wouldn’t shut up about them. ‘I was arrested for stealing an egg.’

Munsell heard. He gasped, snorted, giggled into his hand. ‘What?’ He said between fingers.

‘It was one of those ornate golden things they have during Spring Solstice. I was in debt, they said everything would be forgiven if I could steal it.’

Eren pressed the smile out of his lips, but the corners betrayed him. ‘How’d you do it?’

‘I said I got arrested for it, why assume I actually got my hands on it?’ But before Eren could realise the ridiculous blind faith he had in Levi, Levi continued. ‘I had a friend of mine tell the soldiers that the Priest was being accosted by some woman, that she didn’t understand what she was seeing because the Holy Father looked like he was enjoying it, shit like that. She’s a very good actress.’

Eibringer smiled. It was worth more than any of Munsell’s high-pitched giggles. But nothing was worth as much as Eren’s full attention.

Levi licked his lips. ‘Of course, they all wanted to see so by the time they cleared out to the Priest’s private chambers there were only two guarding the fucking egg – you should have heard them. _Oh, mother goose, bless us with this fucking egg that we have to stand around and protect because it’s a mother-fucking egg_. Something like that, at least.’

‘What happened?’

Levi glanced at Munsell, then turned back to continue the story to Eren. ‘I knocked them out, took the egg, got caught on the way out when a children’s mass started and blocked the exit.’

‘Children?’

Levi shrugged. ‘I couldn’t trample them. I guess it pays to be more religious; I’d have known.’

Eren smiled, pleasant. He traded that story with one from when he was a choir boy, and a little girl got lost downstairs and had hidden in a basket for hours because she didn’t like how dark it was down there. She hid so well they didn’t find her in the building and looked outside. She started to scream in the middle of the night and it had scared Eren so much that he had fallen out of bed.

Eibringer gave one about his wife. Levi decided she was soft in the head, but sweet enough anyway. His story actually threatened to make him laugh.

They camped for the night, Levi’s head swarming with useless tales from more people than he wanted to know, but he cradled and repeated and coddled Eren’s in his head. Anything to relive the way his eyes lit up when he told him about how, one time, he had broken into Annie’s chambers and had shifted everything in her quarters to the side, just slightly. About how he had once been accosted by a bee and ended up falling in the laundry basin, full of steaming hot water and how he swore, it was the closest he had ever gotten to death. Tied up and drowned by women’s undergarments.

About him and his lover, doing whatever stupid thing kids do, or adults, depending on where the timeline the story ended up.

When he dreamed that night, Levi was the one beside Eren, laughing in a childhood he never knew could exist.

This continued for the next few days, and those days were so carefree it almost seemed surreal that they were marching towards a war that none of them wanted to be apart of. The dry, cracked dirt gave way to fields of grass, yellow in the sun but the plains began to roll out into hills and, on the top of a plateau before they descended into the valley that had been called _The Holy Lands_ , Levi could see a massive river.

And attached to that river, a great city, sprawled out like Levi had never seen. He looked to Eren, who shrugged. ‘You’ll find that a lot of the things you think you know are lies.’

Levi looked back to the city, with its massive epicentre building, a dome that glinted gold in the sunlight. From it outpoured a city that tangled and twisted, that stretched out, without a wall, along the river.

‘We aren’t welcome there,’ Eren continued, only to Levi. ‘We once tried to sack the city. They nearly annihilated us.’

Levi had never seen something so large.

It must have taken a day extra to circumnavigate it, a day more for it to fade away from sight. By that time the grass dried up and they were walking on sand. It was blistering hot during the day, and then freezing cold at night. Eren gave stories away freely, Levi gave anything that didn’t seem monumentally depressing. He ended up talking about the people he had met, their story. He told Eren about the woman he tried to have sex with, skipped his breakdown and told him about how she had lost a leg when she was hunting, and had to have it cut off. About all the dirty, filthy things that men liked to do to it.

About the fortune teller that predicted right, and ended up living with a merchant’s widow because he pretended well enough to be able to communicate with her dead husband.

They spoke about everything except the painful truth. They edged around the reason that they sat so close, that Eren would sometimes reach out to touch Levi, even casually, only to retract his hand like it was burned.

They didn’t mention it when Levi couldn’t take it anymore. His blood was too hot and too wild for him to tame with discipline alone. Eren was only a few paces away from him, when he did it, only a few paces away and wide awake staring at the swimming starlight. If Levi was honest with himself, he did it because Eren was still awake.

But in is defence, Eren was almost as much of an insomniac as Levi was. He tried to be quiet, had turned and pressed his face in his crumbled up tunic. It smelt like the hot sun, like the dry sand, and, Levi’s mind fabricated, _Eren_. He practiced breathing through his nose, pressed the growing bulge into the dirt, tested the pressure. If he could rut it out and not be noticed, he would, but his hand snaked around, pushing the chainmail up and dipped into his trousers.

He didn’t bother trying to jerk himself off in his pants, he pulled it out, with the stars a peering glass and Eren breathing, awake, a few feet away.

He bit into his tunic, swiped his thumb over the head, putting the slightest of pressure from his nail, wakening his cock to full length. He tried to do it quickly, using precum to lubricate the process, to enhance it.

Eren was right there, staring at the stars, and Levi wouldn’t dare test him. Wouldn’t dare push himself on him, no matter how sure it would be reciprocated. Consensual.

His breathing laboured, he choked on the fabric, but a pressure was building and his vision darkened. He held his breath, furiously pumped his dick, to get this over with. Just get it over with and be done with it.

‘Levi?’

Eren’s voice, half smothered and croaking, and Levi groaned at the sound of it, the pressure mounted and spilled, a geyser of sparks and heat, coiling deep and springing all through his limbs and into his toes.

And his face was flaming red.

He didn’t dare turn, didn’t dare tempt himself. Whatever Eren’s expression, he didn’t want to see it. Good or bad, all it would do would hurt. It would be disgust, but he knew it wouldn’t be. It would be something different altogether and Levi knew he wouldn’t live with himself if he…

He heard Eren sit up, stand. He man took two steps forward, then turned and walked away.

He was always walking away.

Levi glared into the darkness, tucked himself back in and turned back to the stars. He knew he shouldn’t have, knew it was a stupid, careless move. Knew he wouldn’t even be able to sleep, though he always ended up slipping. Always ended up dreaming.

Last night, it had been dark, and he had been the one pressing, kissing, all in the dark. He had been the one rubbing a fat, underdeveloped belly and he had been the one who woke up and nearly vomited. He refused to touch Eren until the man asked him to, until he touched him first.

Levi wasn’t sure how much longer their game of pretend could go on. How many stories they had to go through before they had nothing to talk about. Most of the time they talked about nothing. Most of the time no one else could say anything, because most of the time they didn’t understand what they were saying.

At least, that’s what Thomas said, about two days ago.

Levi didn’t understand how that was possible, because Eren wasn’t the wittiest kid around; sometimes he was a downright idiot.

The day after, talking had been strained because everything had double meaning. Most of Eren’s life became off-limits because it was tied in together with his dead lover. Everything ended up going back to them, the unanswered thing that sparked between them and made Levi’s intestines sink with a weight that made him feel hollow and slightly sick every time it was ignored.

They ended up speaking a total of ten sentences to each other, and that was it.

Unrequited… whatever. He now knew why it was so painful.

That night, they had taken shelter in a ruin of a town, a skeleton of poverty, really. He had the wrong person’s hands pressing against his skin, the wrong voice breathing into his ear, and when he was shaken awake by the right person, he didn’t trust it.

‘Get up!’ Eren commanded, fear fuelling his strength and his fingers bruising Levi’s skin. ‘Get up, we’re under attack!’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From here on out, things will... escalate, to say the least, so you're all in for quite the ride! I hope you enjoyed it, as always. Next chapter: The Holy Lands


	7. The Holy Lands

 

> His home was a shack with a roof that strained against the wind and leaked in the rain. The walls swayed and cracked over the years, pressure built up and shattered fingers along the foundation. His home was nothing, a place where bodies slept with knives under their pillow and where disease festered.
> 
> His home was Levi’s home, now.
> 
> His mother had rented the home and his belongings and name burned with her ashes. The arms that picked him up were friendly, but friendly faces don’t offer salvation, and Levi found himself in an orphanage with nearly a hundred other skinny, unwanted children. He found himself there for only three days, before a man came with high, jutting shoulders and a rotting mouth that grinned its lies appeared. It handed the woman three copper coins, looked through all the boys. He hummed, and hah-ed, pinched one cheek or the other, twisted their hair between his fingers.
> 
> It would take Levi nearly half a decade to come to terms with why. Why he was chosen. Why his health was his downfall.
> 
> Levi’s home was a shack with a roof that screamed during storms, angry and scorned and threatened to cave in. People came and went, but no one saw. It was a home of blind men.
> 
> Levi had run away more times than he could count, but the outside was worse. Where inside there were sleeping bodies and blind beggars, outside had cutthroats and murderers, monsters that prowled because they liked the night.
> 
> He found no food out in that world. He found no home. He found nothing.
> 
> It had started out gentle, at first. The man would make him share his bed, make him take off his clothes _to stay warm_ , he said, would hold him and pet his dry, cracked hands over Levi’s unmarred skin. He was content with that for a while, and Levi had lost his mother and baby sister, had lost his home, had lost reality.
> 
> Then the petting worsened, made him feel uncomfortable and when he tried to resist the man would pin him down and press his mouth to his, steal his breath and inflame his lungs.
> 
> But outside was worse. It only took a young girl, not much older than him in reality but spades ahead in maturity, run through the streets and have men swarm and swallow her in the worst possible ways.
> 
> Outside was worse, so Levi stayed.
> 
> He grew, it progressed. Instead of hands on him they were inside him, instead of kissing there was licking. He felt violated and unwanted, and this is what he deserved.
> 
> He was thirteen when fingers were replaced with a swollen cock, and fourteen when the man died of his own illness. He only touched children. Levi didn’t understand why this was so important until he tried to relieve the itch himself, and found warts and festers and diseases of sex that he did not know of before.
> 
> The man died of his own volition and Levi had been too much of a coward to do it himself. _The outside world is worse._ Scarier.
> 
> Then the man died, but he didn’t leave, and Levi was cast out in that world and found he could adapt just fine.
> 
> He was fourteen the first time he killed a man. It had been blind rage; a filter replacing the stranger’s face with his tormentor’s, sheer determination, and a fickle little rusty nail he had coaxed in secret for years. He had been a coward. He didn’t kill him when he had the chance. _He had been a coward_.
> 
> He should have done it himself.
> 
> He found he liked killing.
> 
> He found he hated himself.
> 
> Blood gurgled out of the vein and spilled over the fingers that tried to hold it at bay. Over, sinking into clothing and pooling on the street. Levi couldn’t calm his breathing. Couldn’t slow his hammering heart. His hand wouldn’t let go of the nail and he felt alive and free for the first time since he could remember.
> 
> And then the adrenaline faded, and he was left with a corpse of a man he did not know and scratching pressure all across his skin that would haunt him for the rest of his life. 

He had never heard so many men scream in panic. It was dark, the fires had been doused at sunset and the overhead moon was a sliver too little for details to be made out in the dark. Eren’s hand was clasped around his arm, heaving him to his feet before Levi could even filter through fantasy and reality.

‘ _Levi!_ ’ Eren said, yelling directly in his ear and making Levi’s head rattle.

‘I fucking heard you,’ Levi said, pushing him away and picking up his swords. He unsheathed them. ‘Where?’

_Where are the others? Where is the enemy?_

‘Everywhere. Who the fuck knows?’

His brain was half muddled, but he could make out the slight distortion of darkness where Eren’s face was, and fuck the attack, he really wanted to kiss him.

But then some asshole decided to get in the middle of it, and nearly cleave Levi’s head off his shoulders with a curved, foreign blade. He dropped to his knees and turned, spinning, cutting the fat just above the bare knees and barely closing his eyes before the blood sprayed on his face. Above him Eren lunged, piercing the man’s chest.

Levi felt the hot, thick blood drip and pour on top of his head, and almost had enough time for his body to seize with disgust before Eren dragged him back to his feet and didn’t have enough time to parry another man’s attack. The blade slid across the chainmail, and Levi took the opportunity to grab the man’s wrist and slit his throat.

‘Thank God,’ Eren said, when the man dropped to the ground.

Levi kicked the man’s last struggles to the ground and tried to survey the grounds. They were camped in the centre of what used to be a town square, and there was fighting everywhere. It took him a moment to realize that the Crusaders that were still in their beds were dead, and it nearly cost him a life when he realised that one of them was Eibringer.

He had been sleeping right next to Levi.

‘ _LEVI!_ ’ Munsell said, somewhere to his far right and fuck if the darkness didn’t make him feel naked. Eren had turned to fight another man, tall and broad and Levi found his feet tripping over Eibringer’s corpse in a blind effort to reach Munsell.

He didn’t reach fast enough. The outline of a stranger cut through Munsell’s arm and he dropped the axe with a strangled, pathetic cry. Levi dipped his weight, tried to reach him before…

‘Fuck you,’ Woerman screamed, top of his lungs and surprisingly pitched, ‘asshole!’ And he ran with his sword right through he man’s side, so deep he couldn’t pull it out.

Levi reached them, bent down and picked up the dead man’s sword and shoved it into Munsell’s hands. ‘Don’t fucking drop this,’ he told him, and Munsell nearly broke down and cried, but nodded instead.

With whoever still alive awake and in the fray, there were less ambushes than there were already engaged brawls. None of their enemy had any skill, and by the position of the moon on the sky dawn would begin soon.

Levi didn’t dare stray too far, he kept an eye on Eren. One enemy tried to come at him from behind, tried to cut Levi down with an open swing. Levi sidestepped, blocked the arched blade and gutted the man. Munsell, shaking through his entire body, ran behind one of the unarmoured tribesman and stabbed the foreign blade up and curved the point into a lung.

‘Fucking coward,’ Woerman said, spitting out blood and touching his cheek where he had been cut from before.

Levi raced forward, low to the ground, and stabbed the small-framed monkey that tried to jump down from the ruin of a wall and stab Woerman in the neck. Levi caught him with the points of his blades and allowed gravity to drop the body into a heap. Forget the fact that the frame had been so small and light. Forget the fact that it had either been a woman or a young boy.

Forget all of that.

They fought blindly in the dark, both sides. It was a moronic strategy. The tribesmen didn’t have any better ability than the Crusaders did in the dark. Blood was sprayed from left to right, it soaked the dirt and made mud of it. Levi felt himself drenched, felt the blood dry and stick. He was kicked into the dirt from behind, at one point, because he had gotten too close to another fight and while his blades were occupied the man had taken the opportunity to bash Levi down.

He was almost stabbed on the ground, but he rolled towards his enemy’s ankles, tucking his body in, and kicked upwards in the dirtiest fighting he could think of. The man dropped in pain and Levi killed him before he could feel bad about it.

It had been ten minutes.

Levi had lost track of Eren.

It was practically impossible to see faces, so Levi had relied on voices. The enemy was easy enough to spot because they weren’t burdened with heavy, noisy chainmail. Their movements were more graceful and fluid, but they were unprotected and Levi did not fuck around.

Dawn hit, and the fighting slowed. There were more Crusaders than there were tribesmen, and Levi took the opportunity to catch his breath. The blue, muted light cast the blood and horror into indigo, and Levi forced himself to look away from the blood that soaked him to the bone.

He was small. The fastest, easiest way to kill someone was from down, upwards.

Munsell, still alive and starting to get giddy because of that fact, bounded towards Levi. The closest fight was yards away, and there were more Crusaders than there were tribesmen, and then there was a tribesman, and one dead Crusader, and then the fight was over and only one Crusader still standing.

The way his body had moved, around and twisting, dancing between the heavy steel of the Crusader’s weaponry, around and over and then forced into and through the chainmail…

Levi stared at the body of that tribesman for a long time, tried to sear the stances into his brain. He had killed two Crusaders alone, unarmoured. His movements were brutal and concise, coiled tightly and executed perfectly.

He was a small man, thin and awkwardly proportioned.

‘Levi?’

Levi turned back to Munsell, blinking. ‘What?’

‘Shouldn’t we find the others? Help them?’

Yes. Levi nodded, looked around and tried to find where any of the other members of their brigade were. Woerman had been chased further into the streets earlier, but Levi had been tangled, avoiding a mace and the slow, giant man who wielded it.

He heard the sound of a hiss, sucked into a vacuum, and he turned. Munsell was blinking at him, stupidly, his hand holding his side and he laughed, giggled. They both looked down, at the wood that jutted out of Munsell’s side, so long that the fletching brushed Levi’s shoulder.

Dawn.

Levi felt a cold rush through him, and he dragged Munsell out from the open and into the streets, pressing him against a wall and holding the arrow in place from where Munsell’s slippery hands tried to pull it out.

‘ _I’m going to die I’m going to die I’-‘_

Levi slapped him across the face, looked over and cursed the fact that he had dropped both of his swords when Munsell had been hit with the arrow. ‘Don’t fucking touch it.’

‘I can _feel_ it,’ Munsell said, his hand slipping across the chainmail. ‘I can, I have to get it out I’m going to die!’

‘If you take it out now you _will_ fucking die so just,’ Levi said, taking in a breath and feeling his nerves rattle around his lungs, ‘just calm down.’

‘They waited, they wanted us to be tired and they waited for this…’ Munsell said, tears streaming down his face and nodding along with his logic. ‘I don’t want to die, Levi. I… _I really don’t want to die_.’

Levi had no words, but he felt something wet dab at his eyelashes and there was something painful stretching all along his heart and lungs, a cold stone in his stomach.

He was scared.

‘It,’ Levi tried, ‘It’s going to be alright. You’re going to be fine.’ He jostled Munsell’s shoulders, and regretted it when the man yelped in pain. ‘Munsell, do you hear me? You’re going to live. I… I’m going to make sure you live.’

Munsell nodded, looked to Levi and placed every hope he ever had onto his shoulders.

Levi almost buckled with the weight.

He let Munsell go, arms stretched to assure him of the briefness of the departure, and scanned the alleyway next to them, noted the door, and returned only to drag Munsell with him. The door was on it’s hinges and had rotted to its core, so Levi kicked it to its final grave and shoved Munsell inside and chose the corner with the most walls still intact. The roof had caved in ages ago, or perhaps it had only been thatch to start with.

‘Don’t leave me,’ Munsell said, grabbing onto Levi’s arm but not able to get a grip on the metal. He tried, though, and clawed and Levi with the desperation of a man who foresaw his own grave.

‘I have to get a sword.’

‘Don’t leave me,’ and Munsell sobbed.

Levi forced Munsell’s hands away and grabbed them, pulling them underneath his chainmail and making him scream when the arrowhead moved. ‘Hold it,’ Levi told him, positioning Munsell’s fingers as close around the shaft of the arrow as he possibly could. ‘Otherwise you’ll bleed out.’

‘ _I don’t want to die_.’

‘I heard you the first time. Munsell,’ Levi said, taking a firm grip on his shoulder and using enough authority in his voice to break Munsell from his own death-visions. ‘You need to keep calm if you want to live. Can you do that?’

Munsell blubbered, but nodded. His eyes were awash with tears and they fell mercilessly.

‘We’re both fucking dead if I don’t go and get a sword. But I’ll be right back. Do you understand?’

Munsell nodded.

‘ _Munsell_.’

‘Y-yes.’

Levi, satisfied, stood and walked back out the door and into the alleyway, eyes on the vantage points.

Levi didn’t want to die, either.

He wanted to kiss Eren. He wanted to hear more about his stupid, silly childhood. He wanted to learn what songs Eren could sing. He wanted to be alive long enough for Eren to finally come around. He wanted to know what love was like.

He raced out, back into the open and grabbed one of his swords and continued to run, all the way to the other side. He heard an arrow hit and ricochet on the brick behind him but he continued to run.

Someone grabbed his shoulder, and Levi changed the grip on the hilt and plunged the sword backwards.

‘Whoa,’ Thomas, screeching high and slamming Levi into the wall in order to deflect the attack. Levi’s arm was crushed and his arm was jolted numb. He dropped the sword and cursed both himself and the blond. ‘You’re a little terrifying fucker.’

‘Fuck off,’ Levi said, retrieving the sword. ‘Where’s Eren?’

‘You’re lucky I like him, because if I didn’t I’d have run you through and called it a day.’

Levi glared. Thomas laughed.

Laughed.

Like he had time to.

He reached out and patted Levi’s head. ‘Don’t worry, kid, you’ll learn to laugh when you can.’

‘Where’s Eren?’

Thomas’ amusement died and he rolled his eyes. ‘North, I think.’ He scanned above, and pressed himself closer to the wall. ‘Well, probably.’

The urge to find him was consuming, but deeper was Munsell, dying, waiting for his return. Levi grumbled, made sure the grip on his sword was tight, and Thomas stopped his dash back across the square.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘Munsell,’ Levi said, shouldering the hand away. ‘He was shot.’

‘Ah, poor guy. But all able-bodied Crusaders are to head north.’

‘I’m not going to let him die.’

Thomas sighed, then with terrifying ease lifted his sword and pressed the tip against Levi’s chest. ‘This is the price of insubordination, Levi. If Munsell lives through this, he will be pardoned due to his injury. _You_ ,’ he said, pressing, but not breaking, ‘are not injured. _You_ have no excuse.’

Thomas was close enough, so Levi kicked him away. ‘It’s the first time I’m hearing of this.’

Thomas grunted, and pointed skyward. ‘Signal. That excuse won’t hold up.’

‘It’s the _truth_.’

‘It won’t _matter_.’

Their standoff lasted seconds, because it took seconds for a little voice at the back of his head to remind him that _Eren_ was there and that _Eren_ was just as human and able to die as the rest of them.

‘Fine.’

‘That’s the spirit!’ Thomas pointed behind him with a thumb. ‘This way.’

‘What were you doing?’

‘I was south; they tried to kill the horses.’

Levi didn’t like it, but he couldn’t say anything against it. He kept his eyes high and followed Thomas. There were no stragglers, Crusader or tribesman, and it was only when they reached the Northern clearing, just before what used to be the gates, did Levi understand why.

It was an all-out bloodbath that not even the initial assault could compare.

In that moment, Levi understood why the Crusaders rotated, because he couldn’t imagine being victim to this warfare every day for years on end.

Bodies were piled on the ground, stepped on and fought on. Most of the fighting was done, the enemy number not that terrifying, but it was what was left behind… Levi thought there were many in the square, that didn’t even compare.

Levi’s gaze locked on the nearest fight, but Thomas held out an arm and stopped him. ‘We’re going up the wall.’

Levi followed his meaning and took note of the men that were fighting above, probably against the archers. He glared, but nodded, and allowed Thomas to take him back behind the streets to the stone steps that lead upwards. A Crusader, dead or injured, Levi couldn’t tell, was kicked down the steps and nearly crushed them in the falling.

Levi stared at the broken body at the bottom of the steps, looked up, and found a drawn arrow staring directly at him. He pushed Thomas out of the way, causing the man to fall a metre before he hit the ground and with the momentum threw himself against the wall.

The arrow missed, but it was close, and Levi ran the stairs two-by-two and pulled on the string grove, tilting the drawn bow down and stabbed in the general direction of the archer’s face in a mad effort to kill him.

He ended up missing, slightly, and stabbed him in the neck. Blood showered him, across the face he didn’t have time to close his eyes before it got in his eyes and burned. He swore, tried to blink it out.

He hoped it was Thomas that was running up the stairs, because if it wasn’t he was dead. He blinked hard, saw blond, felt safe to blink the blood away and followed Thomas up onto the wall. With the vantage point, he couldn’t help but try to locate Eren, but only managed to find Woerman after the man started to scream to the high heavens in either fear or in some strange form of valour.

But he was well enough alive, if he could put that much effort into useless shit like that.

It was a flash, but in the growing light it was enough and Levi ducked to his heels to miss the blade. Thomas, in a manner that could only be given to someone as large as he was, shoved the boy, tripping him with a foot and tossed him over the wall where he fell too close to his neck on the ground below.

‘You’re a scary kid,’ Thomas told him, holding out a hand. ‘You’re what, seventeen?’

So Eren had told him that, too.

Levi responded with a scowl. Thomas clapped him on the back in good humour, then the expression faded and he pushed Levi out of the way and parried a sword.

Levi turned to help, but his eye caught on a Crusader. It could be Eren, he thought, analysed the pattern of the shoulders and the habit of the movements. He was preoccupied in the next second and tried to block the incoming blade but the fighter hooked his blade around and down, and brought the blade back inside Levi’s defences. It was a slash, thank god, and Levi had never been so grateful for the chainmail that stuffed around his throat as he was now.

The man scowled, cursed in another language Levi couldn’t understand.

Why were they fighting, anyhow?

On the way to block the next blow, a lunge, this time, aiming to cut through the chainmail, Levi cut through thigh and then grazed the forearm.

He cried out, glared, his surprisingly blue eyes cursing him. Levi knew he was a monster in his eyes. He realized he hated what he did next.

Eren, right in the back of his mind, fighting with his heavy blade against a large, muscular man, carved out of wood and glistening with sweat and talent. Eren, who Levi needed to stay alive for just another day, and maybe the day after that, because he wanted to know what it was like to kiss him. Because he wanted to hear another stupid story, even if it had something to do with his perfect, stupid fucking lover.

So he intercepted the blade, shoving his forearm up and now allowing it to stab anything, and cut right across the idiot who fought for a cause that someone else decided was necessary.

He watched him die, grasping his neck and crying, staring at him, asking for help. Levi dropped to his feet, tried to put pressure on the neck he had just cut. The boy, Munsell, but so much younger with his stupidly expressive eyes that sort of reminded Levi of Eren, stared at him, telling him, screaming at him:

_I don’t want to die_.

Levi hated war.

This wasn’t the same as living on the streets. This wasn’t the same as beating or killing another low-life that had fallen so far on the rings of humanity that they became more beast than man. This was just some stupid kid, who thought he could do something good, something right. Take back your home, Levi assumed.

He died. Levi felt like he was going to be sick. He removed his hand and when he stood he swayed on his feet and had to stomp one food hard enough for his nerves to vibrate in order to quell the light-headedness.

Everyone else on the wall was fighting, Thomas covering is back and smashing through bodies more with his feet and fist than he did with his sword. When he could, Levi noticed, he pushed them on the other side of the wall.

He was forcing them out of the fray.

Levi clamped his tongue to the roof of his mouth and tried to swallow the bile away. He looked to Eren, hoping the older man would turn, notice him. Let Levi see his face, if only for a moment.

Eren narrowly dodged the spear, but it came back, swinging in a pendulum, up towards his head, Eren caught it with the flat side of his sword, and the man he was fighting punched him so hard in the jaw Eren crumpled.

_No_.

He ran to the edge, but there was nothing to drop down onto except for the twenty-foot drop that could either kill him or certainly break him. He cursed it, looked over and watched.

Eren stumbled, crawled, even to the side. The spear came up, down, stabbed the earth so deep Levi knew if Eren hadn’t dodged it would have cut through bone and organ and flesh.

He couldn’t stop his heart from hammering, couldn’t hear anything and nearly missed it when the tall, gangly man that Thomas had been fighting retreated and tried to cut him down as a last hurrah. As it was, he dodged too late and metal sank deep into his dominant arm, cutting along, probably into bone. Levi gasped in pain but before the fighter could draw his arm back for a finishing blow, Levi kicked a heel in-between the other man’s legs, hooked his knee and pulled him forward, right into the point of Levi’s blade.

The body went into spasm, and Levi removed his sword and watched the corpse fall into the fray, narrowly missing a Crusader and interrupting a fight for seconds. Levi gripped the wound, understood intimately why Munsell felt so helpless. With the chainmail on top, he couldn’t put pressure on the bleeding.

‘You alright?’ Thomas said, checking his vitals. ‘How deep is it?’

‘I’m fine.’

His concern was interrupted by other Crusaders who climbed the wall. One of them began to give orders, and Thomas pushed Levi into the right direction to carry them out. Levi changed hands, uncomfortable with leading with his left but having no choice but to adapt. Thomas took up the blind-spot, and rather than kick the enemy off the bridge, he applied the same brute strength into the edge of steel.

Blood.

There was a pause, another man died, and Levi turned and tried to find Eren, found he could breathe when he saw him standing above his opponent, sword his chest, bent over and heaving with breath. He pulled it out and slaughtered the nearest tribesman.

There, gone.

But Eren was still there, and that was all that mattered.

‘Fucking archers,’ Thomas said, gaining Levi’s attention. The tribesman in front of them was shaking and horrified, staring at the body of the Crusader in front of him.

Or her.

Levi looked at the body carefully, and realised that yes, this really was a woman. Some girl. He couldn’t fathom what she was doing on the battlefield. Thomas either didn’t notice her gender or didn’t care, because he stalked towards her and aimed to cut her down.

She dodged, danced, aimed for their unprotected legs and nearly crippled Thomas and almost hit the massive vein on the inside of his thigh, but Levi slammed the hilt of his sword into her temple and sent her staggering to the side, blinded from pain.

He didn’t think.

He kicked her off. He looked over the side, but instead of seeing her alive and broken, he saw her tattered body, merged and crushed on the rocks below.

She was dead, too, it seemed.

Levi swallowed, tried not to let his mother’s face come and haunt him. He instead sought out the archers, noted them, counted them. They had found a way onto the ruined peaks of buildings, and were cutting Crusader’s down. Most of their shots were crude, clumsy, missing entirely or hitting extremities. But one was good; a long, lean man who sat atop the chapel steeple, or what was left of it.

They were winning, though. There weren’t too many left of the tribesman, more Crusaders, too much blood spilt. Levi found Eren again, this time backing Woerman who, it seemed, was trying to run for cover.

Coward.

He looked back to the archer he had decided was his next target, and found the nocked arrow pointing in Eren’s direction.

Levi found his feet, realised he was already running along the length of the wall until he could reach the decaying roof of the nearest building. It could very well give out on him, but Levi jumped to it anyway. It shook, the shingles slid underneath his feet and he had to climb up and away. They shattered underneath.

The archer fired his bow.

It hit Eren in the chest.

Levi couldn’t think.

_No._

Eren stumbled, nearly got hacked in half by a tribesman, but another Crusader stabbed him from behind and grabbed Eren by the chest and dragged him off, out from the open. Levi couldn’t see him anymore.

He had never been so scared in his life.

He stood there, staring, looking at the spot where Eren had been hit. Levi looked up, to the archer, and saw him settle the bow around his shoulder and pull out a horn. He blew into it, and the echo of the deep, unsettling cry made Levi angrier than he could ever remember being.

The tribesman stopped fighting, started defending, started retreating. Within the half hour they survivors were either gone or dead, and Levi had managed to get down from the rooftop. Crusaders started to cheer and weep openly. Levi saw Woerman among the latter, leaning against the wall and sobbing his heart out, pressing a hand to his heart and bawling.

Levi dropped the sword, couldn’t hold it anymore. His muscles twitched and ached with exhaustion and he couldn’t find Eren with the regrouping of Crusader’s flooding the town entrance. The thicker they got, the more they celebrated, the more Levi had a hard time weaving through them to where he had seen Eren dragged off to cover to.

He entered the side street, found a lot of injured Crusaders, found Eren halfway down it, scowling at the sky and holding the arrow in place. He noticed Levi almost immediately, and Levi found himself running the rest of the way and collapsing upon reaching Eren.

‘I thought you’d…’ Levi began.

‘Thank God you’re…’ Eren said over him, or under him.

They stared at each other’s faces. Levi looked down the to the arrow that was caught in Eren’s shoulder, in that inconsequential part of the upper body that held no vital points, and when he looked up he saw Eren analysing the blood that coated the chainmail on his shoulder.

‘Bitch, isn’t it?’ Eren said, let out a deep breath of relief. ‘Thank God.’

‘We have to,’ Levi said, but Eren’s wound reminded him of Munsell. ‘Munsell.’

‘What happened?’

‘He was hit in his stomach,’ Levi said, standing, hating the idea of leaving Eren but not able to get the crying, dying Munsell out of his mind’s eye. ‘I have to get him.’

‘The medics should be held up in the stables. Most of the defence is usually held up there.’

Levi nodded, ran, because Munsell could have bled out before the fighting was over. He almost forgot the door, the street, but he found it and Munsell looked like he was white as death but he was whimpering under his breath and his arms were still locked tight around the arrow, underneath the chainmail.

‘ _Munsell_ ,’ Levi said, breathing a sigh of relief that woke his friend and brought along with it a new flood of tears.

‘I thought you left me,’ he said, wailing. ‘I-I thought–’

‘They’re gone,’ Levi said, trying to find the best angle to lift Munsell to his feet and get him to the medics in the southern stables. ‘We were ordered to fight them off. Thomas wouldn’t fucking let me come back to you.’

He settled on hooking both arms underneath Munsell’s and dragging him to his feet. Munsell cried, wailing in agony, and could only mimic the effort of standing. ‘Let go, one hand,’ Levi ordered, pulling on the hand he meant. Munsell complied, and Levi used it to holster his friend’s weight.

‘Where…?’

‘The stables, that’s where the medics are.’

That was why they dragged the fighting north, that was why they had such a hard time fighting off the onslaught. Because the main bulk of the Crusaders were busy guarding the horses, supplies, and the doctors. Knowing only made it slightly better.

An impressive perimeter had been set up, but the Crusaders that guarded it let them go through easily enough. Bedding had been taken to make cots, and bleeding and dying men were already filling them. A man, older and so calm it made Levi felt like everything was going to be alright, ordered Levi to set Munsell down. He narrated what he was going to do, broke the fletching off of the feather and pushed the arrow through to the other side.

Munsell cried, almost broke Levi’s supporting hand. They took the chainmail off and while Levi pressed a soaking cold cloth against Munsell’s chest – it burned him, alcohol, apparently – the doctor flushed the wound, then had an assistant arrive with a molten hot rod of metal that he pressed against Munsell and seared the wound closed.

He had never heard Munsell scream before.

He didn’t want the process to be repeated.

Before the doctor finished with his patch-work job, he looked to Levi. ‘There are more north,’ the doctor said, ‘go bring supplies to them. You’re not needed here.’

Levi would have argued, if Eren wasn’t north with an arrow sticking out, underneath where Levi knew his collarbone was. He nodded. Munsell was blind with tears, so he didn’t bother saying farewell. The assistant, a young Crusader that looked so fresh amongst the horror that Levi knew the feeling the Crusaders had to the uninitiated. The boy handed him blankets and gauze, bottles of clear alcohol, whatever his arms could carry.

His right arm wanted to give out. He wouldn’t let it. He walked to the gate and found people taking the supplies he had in his hands to the point where he had to glare and bar his teeth to protect the things he needed for Eren.

 Eren was exactly where he left him; only this time Thomas was there, standing, talking to Eren and laughing.

Eren was not, but he seemed more relieved than he had been before.

When Levi approached, Thomas took one look at him, threw his head back, and laughed. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ he said, waving his farewells to Eren and walked past Levi, winking, stretching his arms out. ‘I’ll be helping the doctors,’ he said, and turned the corner.

The alleyway had cleared out from when Levi first entered it. Most of the wounded had, presumably, at least, gone to the make-shift hospital to get treated. Levi kneeled in front of Eren, not sure what to touch first. ‘We should get you to the doctors,’ Levi said, quietly, the adrenaline completely gone and leaving him a shaking mess.

Eren shook his head. ‘I know just as much as they do,’ Eren admitted. ‘We don’t really have doctors.’

He grunted, leaning forward, straightening. ‘I can’t push it through,’ he told Levi, ‘it was a crap shot, anyway. You need to pull it out.’

‘Pull?’

The arrowheads were barbed backwards. Pulling it would…

‘It’s not actually that deep,’ Eren said, but Levi couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. ‘Please.’

Levi wrapped his hands around it, his left providing more stability than his right, and pulled. Eren gasped and a hand slammed against the wound that started to leak blood over and down the chainmail. ‘Fuck, that hurt.’

Levi was shaking, he felt like he could cry. He decided to get angry instead. ‘Don’t you fucking do that again.’

‘What, get shot?’

‘It was,’ nothing, it happened, ‘clumsy. You should have been looking out more.’

‘Oh, sorry, next time, I’ll hold up a sign telling people to get in line.’

Levi glared. Eren glared, but then something poke through, broke on his face. He covered it up by clamouring to his feet. ‘I saw you get that,’ Eren said, pointing to Levi’s arm. ‘You were too busy staring off into space. Was the sunrise pretty? _What?_ ’

Levi barely took note. ‘You were the fucking moron who thought it would be a good idea to fight in the open when there were archers! What kind of fucking –’

Levi was pushed against the wall, Eren’s forearms pinning his shoulders back. There was no one in the alleyway, and Levi felt his heart beat for an entirely different reason.

Eren’s hands hovered over his face, like he was fragile and on the verge of shattering, too scared to touch, but everything in his face telling Levi he wanted nothing more than to do so.

So Levi, hiding in his mind but allowing his body to take the courage, reached up and pulled Eren’s head lower. He reached up, pressing their lips together in an angry, painful kiss that was more teeth than lips, but then Eren bent down at the knees and lifted Levi up.

The kiss deepened, skipping hesitation and Levi breathed everything Eren had to give. They were pressed, flush, Levi’s back squished between the wall and the chainmail, and this was not close enough.

Eren dropped him, pulled the chainmail off and Levi took that as a cue to do the same. Before Eren could look over, see the Crusaders that could very well spot them, and therefore ruin everything, Levi grabbed Eren’s wrists and made the man chase his lips further in, around the corner and into the cutout of a doorframe. The building still had a roof, and it was darker in here but their breaths were warm and there was blood that was spilling but they were both alive.

Levi pushed Eren into the wall, leaning upwards and Eren swooping downwards, kissing, alive, with tongues and teeth and lips. Levi felt elated, burning with pleasure, and when he noticed the tell-tale bulge pressing against him stomach, Levi found himself being lowered as Eren sank to the ground, the Crusader’s hands wrapping around the flesh of his ass and causing unbearable knot of tingles to course around and build pressure. Eren dragged him willingly, and Levi found himself straddling Eren.

He lifted slightly, fell down, the friction was gold and Levi gasped into Eren’s mouth and swallowed the Crusader’s groan.

‘Don’t do that,’ Eren said, kissing Levi’s lips and pleading, worshipping Levi in a way he never knew was possible. ‘Don’t do that again.’

‘You’re the one who almost died,’ Levi said, growling, but feeling lightheaded and giddy. Eren whined, at the back of his throat, kissed away from Levi’s mouth and along his jawline and down his neck which made his skin roll with pleasure. Eren kissed, licked at the vein, probably tasted another person’s blood but Levi couldn’t give a fucking damn about that.

No one had ever done this to him before. It was pleasure he had never encountered before. He was bleeding and dying and wrought and broken and Eren was licking and kissing him and sucking and holding him like he was the most valuable thing in the world.

Levi had been right; this was worth living for.

His hands came between them, pressed hot and flat against his stomach. Levi broke away and pulled his shirt off, found it stuck too much with drying blood. ‘You’re terrifying,’ Eren said laughing, pulling Levi down and kissing him. They started to rut against each other, but that was a familiar heat and Levi was terrified that the moment that either of them came Eren would be woken from this spell that had taken over him and would freeze him out.

He pulled at the edges of Eren’s shirt, and Eren complied. The wound wasn’t as bad as Levi had initially thought, but it was still bleeding where his own had clotted, so Levi pressed the shirt against the hole and pressed himself flat against Eren and realised he never wanted to do anything else.

Screw the Crusades. Screw freedom, even, he could do this until the day he died.

‘You can’t die,’ Eren ordered him, balancing Levi in his arms and laying him down on the dirt. Levi found he didn’t mind. There was no way he could get more filthy, and he was soaring.

Eren kissed down again, along his neck, trailing his kisses with teeth that set Levi’s worn out nerves on end. Eren found his way to Levi’s nipple, kissed its tip and then licked it. It felt odd, and then Eren grazed it with his teeth and pressed the pain away with the flat of his tongue and Levi found himself gasping an inhale and arching into him.

Eren took the opportunity to wrap an arm around behind the small of Levi’s back and kissed lower, lower, until he ran out of skin and began mouthing at Levi’s trousers.

‘Good God,’ Levi said, breathing. ‘You fucking…’

‘Don’t scare me like that,’ Eren said, his words against the shaft of Levi’s dick and Levi tensed, pulling himself upwards and grabbed Eren’s face.

‘The shit you put me through? Shut the fuck up.’

He wasn’t sure he was making sense, but Eren smiled, lopsided, his hair strangely tousled for being half-matted with blood, oddly addictive with death all over him.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, sounding like he was joking and it pissed Levi off enough to flip Eren over and reach down a hand and plunging it into Eren’s trousers. The man gasped arched.

‘Oh,’ he said, as Levi’s fingers wrapped around the shaft and slowly pumped him. ‘Fuck yes,’ but couldn’t say any more because Levi didn’t know what to say in response. No one talked to him, he never talked to them, there was no _Oh God yes,_ or _Do that again, that feels so good_ , and there was no compassion if something slipped from his mouth.

In an instant of inspiration Levi pulled out his cock, heavy and weeping and when their bare skin touched Levi groaned so pathetically it came out as a whimper, and Eren, laughed and kissed him.

Levi had never kissed a smile before, it was addictive.

Eren’s hand covered his, wrapped around both of them and squeezed and jerked them both off. Levi, feeling licentious, whorish, whined in his head and hoped it didn’t spill out of his vocal cords, and found his hips thrusting, awkwardly at first but Eren’s other free hand grabbed at the flesh of Levi’s ass and timed it, bringing the imitation of stars in Levi’s head and stealing his breath.

Levi hid his face against Eren’s neck, bit against his collarbone, against the white raised scar that resided there, dominating all attention away from the others. Eren’s breathing was erratic and loud in his ear, ending in groans.

‘I’m,’ Eren said, pitching at the end and grounding out in a growl, ‘I’m sorry.’

Levi couldn’t wrap his head around words. He was getting close. Eren’s pace was increasing and then his hand was just against him and the thumb was swiping around the head of his cock and his fingers spread wide and snapped together.

‘Gah,’ Levi said, tensing and feeling everything hit him and consume him. He fell into Eren in a heap, was turned on by the swollen cock that pressed against his thigh.

‘I’ll,’ Eren said, but Levi kissed him to shut up him, to steal his senses from him for however long it would work.

‘No,’ he said, and Eren was about to argue for a moment, before looking to the ceiling, a brief smile brightening his face.

‘Okay.’

Levi couldn’t believe he was any good, not compared to Eren. Their age was a factor, but the part that made Levi feel inadequate was that, from what he gathered of their relationship, Eren and his Lover had been friends. That their sex life had them doing stupid things like breaking into his father’s bedroom and dressing up in stupid fucking costumes.

And Levi wanted to erase that memory and inflict himself into Eren’s mind. Wanted Eren to want him and crave him just as much as Levi craved him.

He kissed his way down, tried to think about how to give Eren as much pleasure as possible. It was strange, thinking, for the first time, about the other person, rather than a body. Christ, he was lightheaded. He was worn out and he could sleep for days.

But first.

He kissed around Eren’s cock, swollen, red, angry in it’s inattention. Levi planned to rectify it. He kissed, played with Eren’s balls with his hands and earned himself a keening whine from a man twice his age.

Then, with the tip of his tongue, he licked the shaft and plunged his tongue into the slit, wrapped his lips around the head and sucked.

‘ _Fuck,_ ’ Eren said, ‘fuck, yes.’

Levi wanted to talk dirty, didn’t want to fuck it up, do he held his tongue. He let his tongue slide out of his mouth and moisten the underside of Eren’s dick, then slowly, painfully if the unintelligible words pouring out of Eren’s mouth were any indication, sucked further down, swallowing every few seconds as he did so.

He couldn’t get too far, didn’t realise how painful it was for something so large to reach the back of his throat could be.

This was, admittedly, the first time he had ever done this with any enthusiasm. The last time had been when he was thirteen, and the only thing he had done then was shield his teeth with hips lips.

The sudden wrought of anxiety that pulled at him almost made him want to jerk and jolt away but he closed his eyes and focussed on Eren, on the Eren that, from the very day he met him, had tried to help him. On the Eren that would get a million times younger just by talking to Levi, on the Eren that held him in his arms like he was the most precious thing in the world.

And it was all okay.

Levi used his hand to stimulate what is mouth couldn’t.

‘I’m gonna,’ Eren said, his words nearly indecipherable, mixed in with animal groans, ‘Levi, I’m gonna,’

Levi removed his mouth and seconds later, using his hand in replacement of his mouth, Eren curled inwards and up, pressing his mouth and kissing Levi as he came. His lips were sloppy and he broke off to gasp and whine and he fell forward, his face cradled in the nook of Levi’s neck.

‘I’m sorry,’ Eren said, breathing hard and teeth and lips moving against the soft skin of Levi’s neck.

‘If you say this was a mistake I will beat you with a fucking stick.’

‘It was a mistake,’ Eren said anyway, ‘but fuck, I want you.’

Levi felt his cheeks tingle, warm. ‘Then have me,’ he said, and felt like the happiest idiot in the world.

Eren reached up, wrapped his arms around Levi and the both of them ended back on the floor. Levi kissed Eren in order to keep the idiot from thinking, and this time it was tender in a way Levi didn’t know kisses could be. ‘If,’

‘Shh,’ Levi said. ‘I’ll kill the Bishop if I have to.’

‘You shouldn’t have to.’

He was seventeen. Eren was thirty-six. ‘I’ve been told luck favours fools.’

Eren laughed, kissed the life out of Levi and leaned back, boneless. The shirt had fallen somewhere, and the blood on Eren’s chest was concerning. They were covered in filth, some their own, mostly it was others. ‘You need to get that cleaned.’

‘I’ll go to the doctors.’

‘You are _not_ running away from this. I’ll kick your ass.’

Eren stared at the ceiling, then looked and Levi in a way that made Levi believe in a happy ending. Eren reached up and his fingers ghosted over Levi’s temple, his cheekbone and then ended at his lips.

Eren licked his own, looked so painfully conflicted, and then said, ‘we have to be careful. No one can know.’

‘Not Thomas,’ Levi said, but that was just out of spite. Levi had no one to tell. He never had anyone to tell his fancies to.

‘I promise.’

‘If you,’ Levi began but Eren reached up to kiss Levi’s words away.

‘I promise.’ Eren carded his fingers through his hair. ‘If he finds out, you have to run.’

‘And leave you?’

‘ _Yes_.’

It was a lie, but Levi said, ‘Fine.’

Eren didn’t believe him, but let himself do so. He nodded and pulled Levi close, breathed in the sweat and blood of his hair. ‘Who are you?’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘I’ve spent seven years,’ Eren said, ‘I never thought…’

There were so many ways to finish that sentence, and because Eren didn’t Levi felt the answer instead of heard it.

He pressed himself closer to Eren’s chest, watched the wound. ‘Me too.’

* * *

Eren knew he had made a mistake only after Levi left his line of sight. He sat down on the cot, hating himself, hating how much he loved it and how easily he had given in. But _God_ , he wanted nothing more than to steal Levi away some far off corner of the world. A hidden place where the Bishop didn’t exist, where the stigma didn’t exist, where _others_ didn’t exist.

He supposed Thomas could come and visit.

His breathing was shaking and by the time the wound was cleaned and stitched and dressed, it was mid-day and they were stripping the chainmail and weaponry off of the fallen Crusaders.

One of them was Eibringer. He looked shocked, rather than scared, frozen in his last moments and Eren realised he must have died during the initial onslaught when the tribesmen tried to slit as many throats before those on guard could notice them.

He had been sleeping so close to Levi…

Eren took care when removing his chainmail, in replacing the tunic.

‘What is this?’ Levi. Eren stood, turned, and distancing himself from Levi’s anger proved much harder than it was before.

‘We weren’t kidding when we said our enemy were dead, Levi,’ Eren said, not sure how to explain. ‘A lot of the time, we end up fighting dead Crusaders.’

Levi scowled, but Eren knew he couldn’t understand until he saw. It was too fictitious, anyway. None of the uninitiated could understand, even if they accepted it as truth.

‘Levi,’ Eren said, but apologising again seemed superfluous, disingenuous.

‘If you die, am I going to have to do this to you?’

‘I would hope that you do.’

Levi glared, cursed, and Eren realised with a jolt that he was trying not to be upset. He urge to wrap him in his arms and hush him was overwhelming, but he held back, hyper-aware of the eyes that were always around.

Levi probably wouldn’t appreciate it, anyway, being babied.

They stripped the bodies, and no one spoke. They piled the bodies together, up into a pyre, and Eren had to chant in his head condolences. That the fire was a funeral right, that it was respectful, that they were already dead, that they felt no pain.

They did it again with the bodies of the tribesmen, this time only pillaging their steel to be melted down and leaving what they called armour. By the time their bodies were piled high, the sun had set and the fire cast heavy, dark shadows. The smell was horrendous; their tunics soaked with blood and sweat and dirt were collectively wrapped around their head to staunch the smell.

With the sheer number, his chanting sounded like lies. Strangers and their children, their brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, fathers, mothers; they were burning. Not the enemy. This wasn’t a funeral right but a means to an end.

This was stealing their legacy away.

He felt something tug at his sleeve, found Levi, staring at him with a knowing gaze too old for his body. Eren nodded, waiting for Levi to leave and then, after minutes that seemed like hours, followed him.

They met in sheer darkness, and Eren found comfort in Levi’s mouth, in his harsh, violent kisses and surprisingly tender hands. There, Eren found a home amidst carnage.

_But homes can burn, too_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhh it's a day late. I'm so annoyed with myself. I took Sunday off to try to catch up on Game of Thrones and then I only got through half of this chapter on Monday. So it's an early update today, and for sure the next chapter tomorrow. Hope you liked all the action! Oh, and I'm always open to criticism, if you have any - just know that this is not edited, I don't have time, I might after May is over (and subsequently this fic is completed). Next chapter: The Vanguard


	8. The Vanguard

The next day started at dawn and the commencement was a funeral, men dead but still breathing, on horses that wandered through the dirt with their heads hung low to the ground, sniffing for what they could. Thomas was the most cheerful of their brigade, but even Levi could see it was a sham.

There had been eleven Crusaders, there had been four uninitiated, there had been sixteen Bishop Boys.

There were only five Crusaders left, Munsell was with the wounded, being loaded up in a cart and returning to the camp outside Pillar Maria. Eibringer was dead and Woerman had swallowed grief and looked too constipated to speak. There were only three Bishop Boys left, and they trailed after them with shock struck dead in their hearts and the stains of tear tracks down their faces.

He looked to Eren, noted the rigidness of his shoulders and his proper posture.

‘I’m going to run’ one of the Bishop’s Boys said, but his lips didn’t work well enough to enunciate his words. ‘We can’t…’ he looked to his friend, but received no support.

‘They’ll kill us,’ his friend explained, looking at Eren, at Thomas and the three other Crusaders.

The old commander was dead. No one had replaced him, so Levi assumed it had become Eren as default.

‘ _I’ll_ kill you,’ Levi said, turning just enough to prove to them that he was serious.

The bodies of the tribesman were burned, and that’s what had shocked the uninitiated into trying to desert. The Legion Commander, who had been protected with the horses, the supplies, the doctors, had ordered five of them to be killed and hoisted. They couldn’t risk leaving their bodies, so those were burned… but there were five spears for each head.

Eren had placed his entire arm over Levi’s eyes, managed to coax his indignation away with sweet words. But Levi wasn’t stupid. And he hated to be treated like a child. He had seen worse.

But he let Eren think he was protecting him, because as long as he didn’t admit to the older man what _his_ childhood had been like he could pretend it never happened in the first place.

He could feel the eyes of the dead men on his back, could feel it hours after they disappeared on the horizon. Boring, popping, bruised in frozen fear.

But he had seen worse. Had seen a man beaten to death. Had seen another flayed. There was one particularly nasty Head, one of the leaders of the gangs that ruled the ghettos of the city, that preferred to cut deep, swirling designs into her victims, all across their bodies.

She left it to chance if they survived or not. They usually didn’t; she wouldn’t discriminate between this vein or that, but occasional someone did. Their scars were a testament to her madness.

Levi worked for her very briefly, but she worked with her brother and he wasn’t content with their home like she was, so they packed up and moved further in, closer to where criminals ruled, rather than madmen.

Last he heard, someone had poisoned her. Last he heard, she fucking survived.

But there were always unbelievable stories going around.

With their decreased numbers the formation was enforced and Levi cursed the itch that made him want to fuck it all and just reach out and touch Eren. His hair, a hand, anything. But if he thought he was being careful, Eren had become a fucking saint.

There was a constant metre – at least – between them. If their conversation started to become too involved, Eren would purposefully drag others into it. It was being in a fucking orgy without any sex; an orgy of nuns, of celibates, of fucking Bishops.

Levi didn’t know what Eren thought he was protecting him from now, but it was getting on his nerves.

Out of spite, Levi would force Eren to sleep next to him. Two days before they were due to arrive at the camp, Levi snuck his hand down Eren’s trousers, continued to look up at the sky, innocent as can be, and enjoyed with vindictive pleasure the broken way Eren breathed.

‘Levi,’ he said, voice low and full of unsaid threats.

Levi ignored him, began to stroke him, made sure his movements were so inconspicuous that no one on watch would look twice, and left everything up to Eren.

He was surprised when, in a breathy exhale, Levi heard laughter. ‘You’re such a bastard.’

Levi hummed, made sure to keep his pacing, still found it awkward given the angle, but managed to make do. Eren had started to bite down on his lip, forwent breathing altogether in some cases, and moments before he climaxed he pulled his trousers down and Levi made sure keep the ejaculation as far away from Eren as he could.

His carefully controlled breathing after the fact was hilarious, as was how clumsy Eren’s fingers were when trying to pull his trousers up.

‘If we were alone,’ Levi began, keeping his voice muted and away from the harshness of a whisper.

‘What?’

Levi licked his lips, feeling like an idiot for not being able to spell out what he was feeling. How he wanted Eren spread out, sun making him glow. He wanted to taste the warmth where he kissed, wanted to claim him, kiss him, mark his skin. Wanted to kiss him inside, too, because he was pretty sure he could but had never felt the need to try.

He wanted to do a lot of things to Eren he had never felt the need to try before.

But every start of a sentence, trying to explain this, felt too fat and awkward to leave his tongue. He swallowed them instead, and felt bloated.

Eren turned to look at him, and whatever he saw on Levi’s face made him break out into the biggest grin Levi had ever seen on Eren. It made his heart swell, too large to swallow properly and made his dick point out the obvious to him.

‘I’d get you naked,’ Eren said, looking directly at him. He spoke the same way Levi did, but the harsh consonants etched too breathy, coming out in a strange hiss. Northern accents, Levi decided, were going to be the death of him. ‘I don’t know where, anywhere.’

‘A library,’ Levi said, because he had never been inside of one and he couldn’t say chapel without Eren clamming up.

Eren chuckled. ‘A library? With the smell of dust and old paper?’

‘If it was warm enough.’

‘Ah,’ Eren said, smiling, turning his head closer to the ground and looking at Levi through the corner of his eye. ‘Okay. A library. Against the bookshelves or on a table?’

‘Both. Everywhere.’

Eren thought about it for a moment, a finger rolling a pebble around in circles on the ground. ‘A bookshelf sounds painful.’

Levi hesitated. ‘I don’t mind pain.’

‘Ha, I suppose I can’t say I don’t, either.’

Levi had a thought, then, trying to imagine the only library he had ever seen; belonging to some rich fuck that had the library’s window open in the hot summer.

‘You’d be getting a book, on one of those ladders,’ Levi said.

‘What book?’

Levi glared, Eren sucked his lips in and looked about as innocent as a guilty man could. ‘It doesn’t matter. You won’t find it, because you’ll be on the ladder and I’ll start mouthing your dick.’

The amusement was eaten, turned darker, and Eren’s gaze dropped to Levi’s lips. ‘And?’

_And you’ll start whimpering, you’ll try to get down, but I won’t let you._

‘And…’ Levi began, closed his eyes, tried to push the embarrassment back and repeated the words he thought. Eren’s lids dropped.

‘Bossy,’ he said.

‘I’d suck you, I’d put your cock in your mouth and swallow until your knees were so weak you would think they’d give out and you’d fall off.’

‘I’d want you on a throne,’ Eren said, suddenly, ‘sitting there like the fucking bastard you are, like you own everything–’

‘I look like that?’

Eren nodded. ‘All the time.’

Oh. ‘Sorry.’

‘Sorry? It’s gotten me hard more times than I can count.’

Levi found it hard to believe, but the compliment drove straight down to make his trousers strain. ‘Oh,’ he said.

Eren’s gaze flickered, down, caught sight of Levi’s hard-on and grinned. He leaned a bit closer. ‘Like you’re immortal,’ Eren said, but Levi didn’t understand what he meant, ‘like you’re not seventeen, like you’ve seen everything and know how to deal with it. It’s…’ Eren hesitated, then, probably because it wasn’t coming out as sexy as he thought it would. ‘It’s addictive.’

‘What?’ Levi said, turning and looking at him, properly. There was still too much distance between their mouths. ‘How?’

‘You’re in control,’ Eren said, ‘I don’t know how to explain it, but you just look like you could beat the world down and make it bow to you.’

He snorted. ‘And that’s a good thing?’

‘It makes me,’ Eren stopped, took a deep breath in, ‘it’s – god, what am I saying?’

Levi waited, patiently, sensing that somewhere their little game had ended. ‘It feels like you’re out of my league,’ Eren said. ‘Before… that was stupid. It was easy – familiar. With you I feel like every thing I do has to count.’

Levi liked every little thing that Eren did, said. ‘Why?’

Eren huffed a laugh. ‘This is so embarrassing.’

‘Tell me,’ _tell me how you see me_.

‘You’re strong,’ Eren said. ‘You make me feel like I’m a million years younger than you, sometimes. That I should be the younger one, even. It’d probably make it okay that I’m such an idiot.’

‘I’m nothing special.’

‘I can tell you survived something,’ Eren said, ‘possibly something worse – no, definitely something worse than I did. I read your records, remember? I don’t think you understand how few people can survive like you do, and not come out…’

‘A monster,’ Levi filled in for him.

‘I didn’t want to say it.’

‘Who says I’m not?’

Eren rolled his eyes. ‘Okay then, tell me.’

‘No.’

Eren sighed, looked to the sky. ‘You were upset, when we burned the bodies. You were even more upset about the deserters. Trinity,’ Eren said, taking a deep breath, ‘when you’re around, I feel like you’re protecting me, rather than the other way around.’

‘You… why would you see me like that?’

Eren flushed. ‘I don’t know,’ he probably lied.

Levi settled himself, tried to get comfortable, but the strain in his trousers demanded to be dealt with. He started, but Eren’s hand stopped him. ‘Are you going to do it?’ Levi demanded, curious.

‘Don’t say it like that, if I could, I’d fuck you until you couldn’t walk.’

Levi tensed, the wrong hands pressing along his body. He tried to focus on Eren’s face on the stupid, boyish charm that sparked every so often, when he was looking at Levi. When they found themselves in their own little world.

Perhaps it would have been better, Levi thought, if Eren was young and stupid. He wouldn’t be disappointed every time Eren said something that… God, he was pathetic. He tried to press the memories out of his head.

‘Sorry,’ Eren said, stammering a little. ‘It’s just, fuck, um… It’s fine. We don’t have to do it that way.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘It’s obviously not.’

Levi knew he should explain that it wasn’t the thought of Eren being the one to do it, it was the way he worded it. He knew he should, because it was important that Eren knew, but Levi didn’t want to confirm Eren’s theory. He didn’t want to have to explain that someone that Eren thought was so strong and in control was such a pathetic fucking coward to stay for years with a man he hated, a man who…

Eren curled in, towards Levi. ‘I… I can’t.’

‘What?’

His eyes glazed over. ‘The Bishop…’ _Not the fucking Bishop, not again_ , ‘afterwards, he… he did something and I can’t… be the one…’ Levi started to sit up, but Eren pushed him back down with a firm hand. ‘We can talk about it later.’

‘What did that fucker do to you?’

‘I’ll explain later.’

‘Why not _now_?’

Eren looked around, to where the closest watchmen sat, staring into the fire, a few yards away. ‘You won’t like it.’

‘Eren.’

‘I’m not explaining it. Not now. Later.’

Levi was going to argue, but then Eren’s hand was around his dick and, in a few furiously delicious strokes, Levi lost his voice in the effort to keep the moans at bay.

He came far sooner than he liked, and before he could even come down Eren took his hand, pressed a kiss into the palm, and turned around and ignored him with the pretence of sleeping.

It was incredibly annoying because Eren dodged Levi’s attempts at sleeping next to him after that. For two nights Levi had to deal with the utmost joy that was Woerman as a cock-blocking barrier.

Eren only chanced one kiss, when they were packing up and their heads were close together out of chance, and it was over before Levi could even form an answer in kind.

He never really knew the pain of being sexually frustrated before. And without Eren there the nightmares were back in full force, worse, perhaps, than before. Because of the fucking dance Eren was doing around him, because Levi was the stupid child in their relationship and Eren was not only double his age, he was also, technically, a superior.

But he was an idiot.

A fucking idiot that thought he was doing the careful, smart thing.

Thomas proved it, too, the morning after their talk. Levi was in a bad mood after waking up with the ghost of a yellow-tinged dick shoved up his ass, breaking skin and causing blood - and Eren was flitting around, thinking he was oh so clever.

‘If you two are in a fight,’ Thomas had said, ‘please tell me so I can clear out.’

Levi hadn’t answered, but he might have terrified Thomas with the traumatised bruises under his glare. Either way, no one talked to him again for the rest of the day.

And right now, he found himself in the exact same mood as he had earlier. The front lines stretched before them, a massive system of trenches and built-up walls, a gate, really.

Ever since they had left the town where they were attacked, the terrain had become rockier. Flat lands gave way to rolling hills and from them grew jagged rock that increased with volcanic ash. The volcano itself was massive and caved out in a flat peak, black from an eruption that occurred only a few decades ago, according to Eren.

It was this volcano, however, that allowed the Crusaders to create the frontier lines between the so-called alchemists and their home. It was a small stretch, a maze of people and equipment, trenches and building outcroppings. The ugliest city Levi had ever seen. Framed by, apparently, dead people on the front, a volcano on one side and the ocean on the other.

‘If they’re so intent on getting through here,’ Levi said to Eren, ‘why don’t they go around the other side?’

Eren shrugged. ‘Probably the mountains, maybe the climate; we don’t really know. We used to hold more, at least fifty more miles, but we couldn’t hold it so when they tried to take it, we couldn’t stop them.’

‘And they attack here?’

Eren hesitated. ‘Rarely,’ Thomas replied for him. ‘But when they do it’s brutal.’

‘How often do they do that?’

‘Every few years,’ Thomas said. ‘They… well.’

‘They take our dead,’ Eren said. ‘They attack in order to replenish their army.’

Woerman whimpered.

‘Oh.’

The strange, makeshift city, Levi learned, was called the Vanguard. 

The Vanguard was a maze of catacombs, dug deep into the earth and carved out by rock. There were families living there, even, refugees that would work for the Crusaders for the safety that the Vanguard could offer them. Families of dark-skinned children, mothers, even crippled elders. The capable men were given chainmail and armour but no tunic, and they fought alongside them.

Life was different here. Levi knew that the moment he stepped inside. Knew the moment that the brigade tunnelled down, until they reached a dugout that was so far into the earth only a haze of light could find it’s way through, muted and musty. It was too heavy to breath through his nose, and Levi found himself wheezing.

His suspicion was confirmed when, instead of dodging him at every turn, Eren grabbed Levi’s hand and kissed him. The others were in the other room, Thomas had their back to them, but Eren was kissing him like he never had a problem in the first place.

‘What the fuck?’

‘It’s different here.’

‘And you waited to tell me this, why?’

Eren looked off, a little sheepish. ‘It’s… surprise?’

Thomas snorted, turned. ‘Don’t do it out in public,’ he told them, finger transitioning between Eren and Levi. ‘And’ he kicked the fourth bunk, ‘don’t do it in front of him. He’s touchy about it.’

‘I know,’ Eren said.

‘I wasn’t talking to you.’

Each brigade had their choice on quarters, so to speak. A cut out series of rooms that didn’t have doors but knotted rugs that hung from the ceiling. Levi got a bed in the room with Eren in replacement for their dead commander, and as Eren was the one who ordered it, it was decreed.

‘By the way,’ Thomas said, walking back in when Levi had a hand down Eren’s trousers. He cursed and turned his head away. ‘Eren, don’t bring up the commander to the higher-ups.’

‘Why,’ he said, but his voice was ragged and Thomas gagged in jest.

‘We don’t want a replacement. Me and the others; you’ve lived longer, just pretend you got promoted. It’s not like ‘commander’ in a brigade actually has a rank.’

‘More like a captain,’ Levi said, agreeing.

‘Yeah, except every fucker wants to feel important.’

‘Thomas,’ Eren said, and it prompted Thomas to duck out and nearly run into the part of the wall the rug covered. His shoulder was clipped, and Eren bit on Levi’s collarbone with gentle teeth and laughed into his skin.

‘Commander, eh?’

‘Everyone’s a commander.’

‘Everyone’s a Bishop,’ Levi said.

‘Shut up,’ and Eren kissed every sarcastic comment that Levi could think of right off his tongue. ‘I’m a captain now.’

‘You call them commanders,’ Levi reminded him, trying to focus on Eren but Eren took the option away when he pulled Levi’s hand out and held onto the fingers that had been stroking him.

‘Commander of a brigade, captain of the Crusades,’ Eren explained between kisses. ‘The rules of the world don’t,’ Levi caught Eren’s lower lip with his teeth and sucked on the flesh. ‘Apply. Here,’ Eren said when he was free.

Eren pushed on Levi’s sternum, dropped to his knees, and pressed a hot, open-mouth kiss against the bulge in Levi’s trousers, leaving moist circles with his tongue. A broken, bestial groan rattled against Levi’s teeth, and he made sure to watch as Levi pulled against the strings that laced the trousers up with his teeth.

He swore he wasn’t breathing. ‘If,’ he said, because it was important but God, it was hard to think. Eren hummed and slowed himself, pulling at one string in such agonisingly slow movement, causing the lightest of touches that drove Levi crazy. ‘If it’s different here, why were you such a fucking ass?’

Eren laughed, his lips pressed against Levi’s cock and Levi had to throw his head back against the rock wall in order to control himself from rocking his hips into Eren. To keep up whatever tortuous game they were playing.

‘It’s harder to stop once you’ve started.’

‘Stop?’

Eren steadied himself against Levi’s thighs, squeezed them comfortingly. ‘We can’t do this back at camp,’ he said. ‘At all.’

Levi wanted to argue. ‘I know.’

‘Three months,’ he said, his breath warming the moisture Eren had caused on the fabric. It made every hair on Levi’s body stand on end. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I get it,’ Levi said, ‘I’d rather not die, too. Are you going to fucking put my dick in your mouth or not?’

Eren’s shoulders raised and he swallowed a laugh. He pulled Levi’s trousers down, kept his distance while Levi’s cock sprung free, angry at the teasing, and when Eren put his mouth around him, Levi realised one thing.

Eren had spent nearly Levi’s entire life with another man.

Eren had a lot of fucking practice.

Levi bit down on his fist to muffle the strangled sob, whatever it was, from being too loud. He could feel the back of Eren’s throat, couldn’t fathom how he moved his tongue, sucking, swallowing, dragging it over, under, all along the shaft.

It was quick, fast, Levi had never come so hard in his entire life.

He sank to the floor in an ungraceful heap and Eren cradled his face in his hands and kissed him, small, innocent little pecks. Levi had never felt as wanted and good in his entire life, and he pressed the kiss deeper to keep from the urge to cry.

‘I need to go,’ Eren said, eventually.

Levi nodded, but his fingers wouldn’t let go of Eren’s hand, causing the older man to smile and kiss each finger away. He stood, smiled at Levi and tried to leave but returned to press a kiss that Levi’s heart paid more attention to than his dick ever could. ‘I’ll be back in a few hours, probably.’

Levi didn’t know how he wanted to respond – grumpily, sarcastic, sickeningly sweet? So he nodded instead and tried not to feel pathetic when he held on to the hand that was cupping his cheek.

Eren left, Levi changed, and Thomas came in with an order to collect all of their laundry and head down with him to get them washed. They left their quarters, wound their way through with sacks full of soiled, bloody, filthy clothes supported on their shoulders.

Their destination was further down into the ditch that the Vanguard was carved out of. The sunlight was a welcome change to the muted darkness of their quarters, so Levi didn’t complain.

From the court in the centre, Levi could see the streets and carved out homes as they were etched into the ground, and how they continued upwards in a lazy slope.

A woman approached them, old and snarled, with black hair and dark skin and stunning green eyes that made Levi immediately think of Eren. ‘Giv me dōse,’ she said, ‘no leave.’ She snapped her fingers and a younger girl, maybe thirteen, took the sacks from Levi and the woman took Thomas’. They disappeared into one of the many dark tunnels.

‘No leave,’ Thomas repeated, ‘you heard the lady.’

Levi scowled, found a column to lean against and sat down. Thomas shook his head in disappointment and chased down one of the lovely women that passed by him, speaking in a language Levi had never heard from before, but by the way the women giggled in response and answered in the common tongue, Levi assumed he knew it badly.

Into an hour, when Levi was well and bored, he felt someone sit next to him. He jolted, having not heard her, but before he could stand up and leave she commanded him, ‘sit.’

He stared at her, considered leaving anyway, but her patient expectance reminded him too much of his mother, and he found himself settling back into his spot. He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. She smiled at him whenever he looked at her directly, her skin a golden brown and her eyes almost dark enough to match her raven hair.

She looked nothing like his mother, and yet she was all he could think about.

‘Your name?’ she asked, polite. Her accent wasn’t as thick as those of the others, but it was still unmistakably there.

‘Levi.’

‘Levi,’ she said, nodding, ‘so that is your name, this time. It is a good name.’

‘What?’

She ignored him. ‘May I see your palm?’

It was too much effort to argue, and it felt rude to ignore her, so Levi held out his hand. She took it, stared into his eyes and traced lines into his palm. ‘We are of an old race,’ she told him, ‘we are of this land.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry? What for?’ Levi thought it should be obvious, so he said nothing. She chuckled, and looked down at his palm. ‘This land is being poisoned. No one can stop it.’

‘Should tell the Bishops that.’

‘If only they’d listen,’ she said, smiling conspiratorially at him. ‘Should I tell you your future?’

He shrugged.

She traced along the fat of his thumb. ‘You are a good dancer.’ Levi snorted. ‘But a better fighter,’ she said. ‘Humanity’s strongest.’

‘Humanity can’t be all that strong, then.’

‘Humans _are_ weak,’ she said, but the way she said it made Levi feel uneasy.

‘I don’t have money to pay for this.’

‘There is no money here,’ she told him, and peered closer into his palm. Levi wondered what she thought she could see, other than collected sweat dug in the wrinkles in his skin. ‘Ah,’ she looked up at him, reached for the other hand, and then traced new designs into that palm.

‘What?’

Her face was blank, for a moment – then she blinked. ‘You will lose him.’ He snatched his palm from her, couldn’t, her nails bit into his skin. ‘This is strange,’ she continued, confused, ‘why do they connect?’

‘What the hell are you doing about?’

She let go and his hand collided with his gut. ‘You do not have a kind future, Levi. And a crueller past than any.’ She stood, and evaded him when he tried to block her. She was there; almost spun around, and then was lost in a sea of women with woven baskets, filled with fresh linen.

‘Thare you are,’ the old woman from before told him. She pointed out three girls, who dropped their baskets and began to collect the edges of the sacks. ‘It’s done. Take.’

Levi took them, cursed Thomas when he saw them, and when they returned to their quarters it was dinner and Eren had yet to appear.

* * *

Eren was an imposter amidst a room of pretenders. Captains to the commanders, commanders to their men, but Eren was not officially either. He dared not speak up during the meeting, where they pushed figurines on a large, worn map. ‘How many causalities?’

‘Twenty per cent,’ someone said.

‘Damn,’ the man said, then removed a few pieces from the table. ‘We will have to break up brigades. Uninitiated will take the west, it’s the least habited, from what the scouts could deduce.’

Eren felt his stomach drop, but the fucker had left all it’s contents stuck in his throat. The Crusader’s Commander continued the attack plan for the next day, and some part of Eren listened, because now he had to. Sort of.

He was not going to be fighting alongside Levi.

The longer the meeting became, the angrier Eren found he was getting. It was entirely pointless, anyway. It was always pointless. Fucking Bishops. If they truly had wanted the war to be over, to have the necromancers dead and gone with, they would have sent their armies, their trained soldiers with solid armour and formal training. They wouldn’t send untrained boys and untrained soldiers to fight and command and live on the brink of their lives.

They were Crusaders, their hierarchy forged in battle, but they were not military and they certainly weren’t good at what they did.

And Levi was not going to be fighting beside him. It was hell enough fighting the tribesmen and not knowing where Levi was for hours, and then to be so far away…

Eren refused.

He refused to let Levi die. Would lay down his life to keep that promise.

Their enemy had recently reached the old city; any closer and the Vanguard wouldn’t be safe. Eren understood the necessity, the urgency to commence an attack and clear out the town before the threat could get too close. And with the tribes carrying out orchestrated ambushes, it was a paramount task.

But Eren refused to obey.

They were dismissed, were too late to dine, but he was a captain now; would be called by commander by Thomas until he grew tired of the word, and captains and higher ranked personnel received food regardless of when they went in for it.

He collapsed into bed when it was all over, and moments later Levi kicked him in the stomach. Eren groaned, opened an arm for him, and felt the younger man slide into bed with him.

Eren breathed in Levi’s hair, and found he slept easy that night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a filler chapter, sort of, it's also not, but it sort of is. Sorry about not updating yesterday! Next chapter: The War


	9. The War

Levi had only seen one coordinated attack in his life. It had been a turf war, and he hadn’t wanted either side to win so he contently watched from the rafters of a dilapidated hotel that housed whores and their crying bastard infants. He had been staying there for weeks at that point, enough for the Mother of the hotel to urge him away from the attic and the viewpoint to the violence down below in the streets.

‘They won’t come in here,’ she had said, ‘they know better. Get down.’

But Levi hadn’t been watching because he had been concerned about the safety of the women and their festering young.

There had been no strategy in the brawl; two sides, one winner, all sinners – that was what he heard. He watched them with their clubs and makeshift weaponry – mostly refashioned farming tools – hack each other to bits with loud war cries and absolute stupidity.

He had criticised them, critiqued them, mentally created an entire battle plan that they could enact. Watched men die and get maimed because their pride was larger than their pea-brained intellects and watched them suffer for it.

They marched out into the deserted battlefield and towards dry pillars of rock that once made up a city, browned from what Levi had initially thought was age, but later was revealed to be blood. That mindless brawl came to mind – attack for the sake of attacking, fight for the sake of fighting. Where wins and loses didn’t count in the wake of pure rage. This was like that brawl, tied up in a pretty ribbon called duty and urged with the sword called _necessity_.

Closer, Levi could make out movement. Woerman’s fear became so rank his horse began to skit, dancing with tight, fearful steps, side to side, back and forward, heavy pants that matched in tandem to her rider’s.

Woerman was going to die, probably. Levi might have had something comforting to say, but no one had taught him the words.

The uninitiated from all of the brigades were collectively ordered to take the western part of the city, where the buildings were more broken down bits of rubble than homes. They were a led by a Crusader that Levi had never seen before that morning, when he was whispering sweet nothings to one of the local girls in her language.

It sounded a lot better than when Thomas had tried it.

Their display had been disgustingly sweet, and it made Levi increasingly irritated when he thought back to how Eren had shaken him awake that morning, kissing him to soften the information about the commands – that Eren, and Thomas and the three other Crusaders were going to be a part of the vanguard efforts in reclaiming the city, and that Levi and the other nitwits were to go west with all of the other uninitiated.

Levi had kicked Eren out of the bed. It hadn’t made him feel better.

Now, though, with an overcast being brought in on air contaminated with salt, Levi’s anger was slowly divulging into fear. _Eren won’t be there_ , he will be in the thick of it, with other talented soldiers, yes. But Eren had a weak arm, Eren wasn’t as skilled as Levi was – their last battle had proven that – and the fucking Crusaders’ concept of a fucking strategy was just bounding in and killing things they had tried to describe but came across as superstitious nuts.

_Remember_ , the man leading them had said, after he kissed his wife goodbye, _aim for their heads; tendons, you can’t kill them, but you can immobilize them_.

They were the walking dead, apparently, they were slow but there were many of them, and the real trick of it all was to not die and be brought back to their necromancers, to not become a dead soldier yourself.

It was important, they said, to reclaim the city because their next step after that was to march on the Vanguard.

It was, in Levi’s opinion, an absolute fuck all of a day.

The city, or what once was, grew closer. It was nice, in a way, to not have to circumvent around the city to attack the northern side of it, to just ride straight for the pitiful outcropping – probably once a ghetto.

The sea wind grew stronger, blew a maniac dance into the horse’s manes and tails. Their hammering hooves created a beat that was joined by the slapping, clapping white waves. The closer to the city they got, the more Levi could see it.

And he had never seen the sea before.

The horizon bled in with the storm clouds, everything angry; everything more powerful than any human army could match. The waves hit the declining cliffs, slammed upwards and sprayed white foam into the air. In that moment, Levi believed in a higher power, but not that of the Church’s God.

He swallowed, looked away; they continued their decent into the valley. The cliffs mellowed out to shoreline that breathed and exhaled and tried to swallow the rocky beaches, to drag it down.

The Vanguard was a ditch placed between a volcano and a sudden, jolting fall into the ocean. The city that they once held, ages ago, had placed its poorest district in the valley and built its wealth up into the cliffside. Now closer, Levi could make out the skeleton of a castle ahead, battered and looking out.

It had probably been incredible, once. Like the city they were forbidden to cross through.

The Crusader leading them suddenly let out a yell that cut across the ground; it might have been words, Levi couldn’t make them out, but the outskirts of what had once been were approaching fast, and Levi felt his heart race to match the wild gallop of nearly a hundred horses. Levi pressed his heels down and placed the reins in one hand, and drew one of his swords with the other.

He almost fell off when his horse jumped over the low rubble of a wall, not expecting it, but righted himself and _did_ fall off when his horse jolted to the side to avoid running into a large, nearly naked man.

Levi rolled, only had enough presence of mind to make sure to drop his sword, lest he killed himself in the fall, and his spine cracked against a rock. He gasped, couldn’t find the air that whistled around him and tangled his hair. He blinked the spots back, and saw a sword point fall between his eyes.

He didn’t have enough time to roll, and, stupidly, he tried to back away from it before he ducked his head and hoped to God. He heard it eat the ground, sink in.

He looked up to his attacker, and saw nothing. It was the man that had spooked his horse, but his eyes weren’t focussed on Levi and his expression was slack and lacklustre, frozen and forgotten in some emotion that wasn’t felt.

Lower, barely seen from the rapid billowing of his shirt, were gaping lips of torn, rotting flesh, and the dark red rot of a corpse.

Seeing it, even after hearing it, was still unbelievable – impossible. Woerman ran by and slashed the corpse, deep in the shoulder, and was off again. The fucker still on his horse and, considering the only reaction to the wound was a step of weight, absolutely useless.

Levi forced himself to his feet and drew his other sword. The corpse raised it’s arm up and slashed, but it was so slow and clumsy that Levi stepped outside of range. He picked up the other sword he had dropped, spun it around his wrist, caught it, and felt absolutely safe.

When the corpse, blue eyed and dumb, tried to attack again, Levi sidestepped and hacked into its bone, cutting through marrow. The arm dropped, tore the rest of the way with the bone severed. It hung uselessly and its sword fell.

It didn’t flinch.

‘You’re fucking kidding me,’ Levi said, and cut at the nape of its neck when it bent down to pick up the sword. It faltered, didn’t die, he cut the rest of the head off and when the body floundered on the floor Levi stabbed at its shoulder joints and then at its pelvis, forcing pressure and severing tendons and limbs from the torso.

It still tried.

This was going to give him fucking nightmares.

Woerman backtracked, horse still acting up, stopped beside Levi. ‘I’m with you,’ he said.

‘You mean you’re a fucking coward,’ Levi said, wiping pebbles out from where they had dug and clung to his jawline when he fell. He kicked the corpse. ‘Even you can handle this.’

Woerman scowled. ‘I don’t care.’

_Good for you_ , Levi thought; then reconsidered.

How hard would it be to fight off several of… _them_ …

A cold twist in his cut nearly made him wimper. He looked north, where the vanguard, where _Eren_ should be.

‘I’m going inland,’ Levi told Woerman, ‘find someone else.’

‘We’re ordered to clear this part out.’

But this was not where Eren was, and Levi was a better fighter than most. What did that fortune teller say? _Humanity’s Strength_? Something like that.

‘Then clear it out,’ Levi said, and headed where his gut urged him to be. Woerman hesitated, then followed him, safe where he was far up on his horse.

‘I’ll stay with you until we reach town,’ Woerman said, and Levi didn’t care.

‘Fine.’

‘You’re looking for him.’

‘Shut up,’ Levi said, and because he felt like it he used his swords to scare Woerman’s horse into rearing and throwing her rider off. ‘Do what you’re told, Woerman.’

‘Do what _you’re_ told, Levi,’ Woerman said, cursing his breath out of his lungs and rolling back onto his feet, more battered than before. ‘Fucker.’

Levi scoffed and ignored him, would have, if Woerman didn’t cut him off, one arm stretched out and the other trying to fix the shoddy grip he had on his sword. Not that it was to any use; with one hand the blade’s weight tilted earthbound.

He count hurt Woerman, knock him to the ground in an instant, go further inland and find Eren, but Woerman was exhausted, scared, and determined, and then there were footsteps and a young girl walked around the corner and Levi found his stomach drop.

Children.

They used _children_.

Woerman followed his gaze and landed on the little girl. ‘It’s…’

There was a gaping lopsided smile carved into her throat, her hair was matted, torn, pulled so rougly at the scalp that there were festering maggots burrowing into her skull. Levi swallowed, tried not to breathe, was endlessly glad at the salted wind that drowned out anything else.

He walked up to her, she, who couldn’t even lift the axe she had, it was so heavy, and cut her head from her body and her limbs from her torso and tried his best to ignore Woerman’s dry heaving.

‘Clear them out,’ Levi said. ‘They’re easy enough.’

‘That was… she was…’

Levi’s lip curled, he kicked at her head, found a nightmare in the unblinking eyes that stared back at him. He frowned, tapped her face again, and received no reaction. The torso, however, was still twitching.

The limbs were dead. Everything he cut _off_ was dead.

He tried to stab her tiny chest, knew he cut dead into her heart, but the torso still twitched and during his experimentation two other Crusaders ran into their street and narrowly dodged a charging monster of a man. They jumped out of course and the corpse collided right into the wall of a building and broke through, cutting up dust that was chased away in seconds.

‘What the hell,’ Levi said, raising both swords. All three of his so-called brothers hid behind him, possibly fled further back, but Levi knew Woerman didn’t. His bravado was starting to raise its hackles and Levi’s ears were not thanking him.

The body stumbled backwards, turned towards them in a strange rotation at the waist. It’s jaw had been dislocated and torn with its collision, hanging low and loose.

‘Get ready to dodge,’ Levi warned Woerman. The yell Woerman had been using for fortitude stopped for an inhale at Levi’s words, and then the charging corpse ran at them.

Levi dodged in plenty of time. Woerman got clipped, but the long halberd the corpse was charging with didn’t hit him, thankfully.

This was incredibly fucking annoying. ‘Woerman, get up,’ Levi ordered, eyes on the beast that was once a man that had hit another wall, and was slowly turning to aim for them again.

Woerman stood, panting aggression. ‘Now what?’

Now what, indeed.

* * *

By the time they breached the northern wall the wind had picked up and assaulted their skin and armour with salt and freezing cold rain. Thomas rode beside them, but they were immediately separated when they tried to cut through the streets, swinging swords and allowing their horses to trample more bodies as they cut through. To his left, Eren saw a young, battered young woman, clothes torn and practically naked, plunge a long knife into the breast of Thomas’ horse.

It screamed, reared, threw Thomas off and ten bodies were on him. Eren cursed, kicked his mare’s flank. Her breathing was hard, she reared, stepped on and squashed those in front of her, then kicked out her hind legs when someone tried to cut her, hitting the heavy metal protecting her instead.

He forced her forward, knocked into the shoulders of men and women and stepped on little bodies in her way, and Eren swung blindly at the backs of those surrounding Thomas.

He cut at the back of the necks of three of them. Their swords dropped and they dropped, moving but inhibited. Thomas took that moment to grab onto the back of Eren’s saddle and hoist himself up.

He was bleeding, bled right through both his tunic and Eren’s, but the grip on Eren’s stomach as strong. ‘What’d you… what’d you do?’

‘No idea,’ but his mare started to act up, and he kicked her to stop the skittering sidesteps and she bounded forward. Thomas took only a moment to catch his breath before he raised his sword and began to cut the bodies that got too close on the left, while Eren took the right.

The storm arrived on the battlefield an hour in, bringing with it a darkness and a heavy downpour that slaughtered Eren’s eyesight. He cut randomly, kicked, tried to get good enough angles to cut through bone and stop their weapons and their stupid, simplistic attacks.

There were many crusaders, hundreds. There were more corpses.

Eren cut a little boy in half and kicked the twitching torso away. There was a moment to breathe. He caught a nod with another of his brothers and then turned to see how Thomas was handling things, how far apart they had been separated since one of the dead mountain men, large and hard as rocks in life, rammed his mare and toppled her over. She was dead moments later, but the fighting had dispersed and become diverse, and there were just as many red tunics as there were rotting, stinking bodies.

He could hardly see anything, could hardly hear anything. Water weighed him down, rushed in his eyes and down his cheeks and cascaded down his chin. The onslaught was just as dangerous as the dead bodies, and more than once Eren had to parry a sword that belonged to another Crusader.

Movements were clearer than people, and the fighter that Eren was looking at could just as easily be someone else rather than Thomas. Eren cut deep into the belly of a scrawny man, lifting it off of its feet and throwing it away.

Thomas was next to him then, panting. ‘Thanks,’ he said, yelling because you could hear nothing.

‘What’s wrong?’

Thomas shook his head. ‘I’m fine.’

He wasn’t, but there weren’t many opportunities to fall back. Not in this rain, not in this fight. A body came into focus, and the shadow that was blurred out by the flood revealed itself to be another dark-skinned kid, limping because of a deep cut in his leg that threatened to snap and break.

‘Down!’ Eren commanded, and Thomas dropped to his feet just as Eren raised his sword to block the strike that would have killed Thomas from behind.

Eren couldn’t even tell if his friend was bleeding; everything was being washed away too quickly.

A low, terrifying rumbling shook through the streets. Eren shoved the kid’s blade away and brought the sword back up at his neck, cutting through it and slamming it to the ground, severing it.

‘What the hell was that?’ Thomas said, standing, his breathing laboured. They both looked to the source, felt the rumble echo, louder, and watched and entire building collapse inwards, caving and snapping wooden support and beams, outpouring stone and rock into the street and burying Crusaders and dead-men alike.

Eren found it difficult to breath, difficult to swallow. He forced himself to turn away and enter back into the fray, thoughts of _Levi, Levi, Levi Levi Levi_ echoing through his head.

Men died easy. They died so easy.

He was in the west, practically south, right next to the ocean. The dead-men were supposedly thinnest there. Levi could handle himself.

But this rain. The sea must be massive in itself, the waves tidal and terrifying.

A what if almost killed him, but Thomas cut the arm off and kicked the body into the mud. Eren cut through its neck before it could manage to stand, and without a weapon or a head to see with, its floundering steps were harmless.

‘I have to find him,’ Eren called to Thomas, who had dragged the both of them so that their backs were protected by a wall.

Thomas nodded, and they were fighting again, cutting but not killing. They tried to get through the streets, but the dead-men were rats in the streets and no one had time to properly finish them. Many had no arms, many no heads, many still walked and bumped into you and blocked your focus and just got in the way.

Then arrows poured down with the rain, catching Eren in the forearm and Thomas in a calf and everything went to hell.

‘ _Fuck’s sake_ ,’ Thomas said, leaning on one leg and balancing against the wall. ‘The _fuck_ , this isn’t fair.’

It was ten minutes before the first tribesman reached them, and by the time the half-hour mark came through and they should have been rotating with another batch of Crusaders, the tribesmen reached them and attacked both Crusader and dead-man alike.

Eren couldn’t leave, not with Thomas’ leg the way it was, so he defended his weak side, cut down dead-men and then tribesman as they arrived, but with live, breathing, thinking fighters his arm became more of a hindrance, the blood loss making his head dizzy.

He cut a man down, blood spinning and swirling, broken apart by raindrops but staining the ground regardless. Eren turned, prepared to kill the woman who was attacking Thomas – _winning_ , against Thomas, who couldn’t dodge or move without his leg caving.

Then a dead-man, stupid, apathetic, one who had sauntered behind Thomas during their fight… he lifted an arm and stabbed Thomas in the back.

It was so simple it was pathetic. Eren watched, couldn’t believe his eyes because the rain drowned out the cry that must have come from Thomas’ mouth and the rain washed the blood away so the knife came back clean.

The woman hesitated, just a moment, and then lunged, her sword not hitting Thomas but the dead-man behind him and she impaled him into the wall. She pulled her sword out, the body dropped, and she cut its head off.

Eren raced to Thomas, caught his friends falling body, was nearly crushed when Thomas fell into him.

‘Sorry,’ the woman said, babbling and hysterical, ‘sorry, sorry,’ and then continued in her own language. Eren couldn’t hear her, couldn’t, wouldn’t, he pushed Thomas up to look in his eyes.

The blonde blinked, slow, water catching in streams off of his eyelashes and cascaded down his cheeks. It took him forever to see Eren, and when he did laughter bubbled up and blood spilled over his lips.

‘No,’ Eren said, said a lot of things he couldn’t remember. His lips were numb and he was numb and Thomas tried to speak through the blood but bubbles came out instead and then he wasn’t moving at all and Eren was shaking him so violently that Thomas’ head rattled around the spine.

‘Up,’ the woman said, ‘Up, sorry, sorry, _up!_ ’

He pushed her aside, was about to kill her but her wide eyes begged his forgiveness and her protection had likely spared his life.

‘Thank you,’ he said instead, but the words were meaningless to her so he searched his knowledge for the word in her language and repeated it to her. She nodded, understanding, reached out and touched his arm and repeated her apologies.

He nodded to her, she back, and they parted.

Thomas’ body was left, body swallowed in the mud and face unseeing towards the tempest above.

Anger fuelled him, anger blinded him, anger made his steps heavy and his movements foolishly awkward. He kept seeing Thomas in every body, saw him every time he cut another down. Saw that stupid knife that had ended it and…

He could feel his cheeks steam, his body was hot and his best friend was dead. That idiot… that idiot…

He hadn’t even been careless that time, he had done everything right this time. He didn’t charge off and try to save everyone he saw, didn’t waste energy where he didn’t need to. He had _listened_ to everything Eren had told him over the years and… and…

And the tribesmen had unleashed a volley of arrows and had immobilized him and a dead man had killed him.

His breathing was erratic, his movements were going to get him killed but he couldn’t fix them or his stance. He battled his way through, heading south, heading to the ghettos of the west. Levi, he had to find Levi, if he was gone…

Eren would have nothing left. He couldn’t… he couldn’t lose him too. He had to find him, had to protect him.

Thomas was dead.

Eren didn’t realize he was crying until he screamed into the face of a tribesman and gutted him. If they just found with them instead of against them. If they… if they were _human_ …

Rage blinded him, grief numbed him, warped time and made the hours that went by seem like minutes. Everything blended into one another, and he nearly killed one of the Bishop’s Boys in the process.

In the last instance he yanked his arm to the left and his sword chipped into stone instead. Eren looked at it and cursed, knowing how dull the blade must be at the point.

He had no doubt in his mind that the tribesmen had ambushed the outlaying Crusaders, had brought a war to both fronts and offered no one the opportunity to retreat. They worked on a system basis, but no retreat order had been made, or perhaps no one had heard the deep, screaming bellow of the horn.

‘You,’ Eren said, recognizing the tunic before the face. ‘Where is Levi?’

He was prepared to kill the man, knew he would if he didn’t have an answer. The Bishop and the fucking Bishop’s orders and the fucking Bishop’s Crusade. They had lost the Vanguard before, not for long, but they had.

The fucking dead men did not cross it. They fought the Crusaders but they did not advance.

‘O-over there,’ the man said, pointing to the street to their left. ‘I,’ but Eren didn’t care for the rest of his words and left the man to deal with the three dead men that were making their way closer.

The storm had lightened, but the lightening blinded them and the immediate thunder shook Eren right to his bones, staggering his heart and stripping him of two senses for precious seconds he might not emerge from.

Thomas was dead, but Levi was right there.

The boy fought with a frenzy that might have terrified Eren, a fluidity that was almost a dance. Eren wanted to collapse, exhausted, wounded and bleeding as he was, but Levi was right there and if he saw Levi die right there, Eren…

He wasn’t sure what he would do.

When his lover had been burned to the stake, Eren blanked. Blanked in a monstrous rage that had killed people, the first people he ever hurt, he had ripped into people and killed someone when he pushed his thumbs into their eye-sockets and ripped right into their brains with his nails.

The dead men never gave him satisfaction in killing, not the way that people did. The urge only came up occasionally, spurred him forward with a dark voice, his voice, hissing in his ear and a poison burning through his veins.

Eren had almost killed Thomas, once, the first time the Grand Bishop Reiss approached him after burning his lover and scarring Eren’s body beyond recognition. He had grabbed his sword and was prepared to slaughter everyone in the keep, to cut them and beheaded them, to flood the stone floors with enough blood to drown someone in.

Thomas tried to get in his way, and it was the slightest of sentiments that made Eren hesitate long enough for Thomas to attack him, cutting a long, jagged line into Eren’s chest.

The wound nearly killed him, but it saved his life.

And now Thomas was dead.

Eren slammed the dead man Levi was fighting into the wall, jammed the tip of his sword into its neck and watched the body drop underneath it. Levi was panting, but whole. He had a cut on his chin that was bleeding freely now that the storm had passed overhead from torrential downpour into light rain.

There were so few dead men in the area, not enough things to kill to expunge the anger Eren felt. He looked to Levi and tried to find comfort in the fact that he was alive.

Levi panted, checked around them, for enemy, and when the streets were clear enough he threw himself at Eren, saying ‘Thank God,’ and pressed his lips against Eren, breathing life and hope back into him. Eren threw an arm around Levi’s waist, adrenaline allowing him to lift the smaller man closer to his mouth.

They pulled apart. ‘Hide,’ Eren said, a unformed plan racing out his mouth. There was no time for logistics. ‘Hide, Levi.’

‘What?’

‘We’re hiding. The docks,’ Eren said, swallowing. He gestured ahead, ‘the boathouses. Go.’

‘Eren,’ Levi said, protesting, but Eren was corralling his body to where they needed to go. ‘Eren,’ Levi tried again, grabbed onto Eren’s tattered tunic and shook him. ‘Stop!’

Eren reached a hand out and cupped Levi’s face. ‘The tribes attacked,’ he said, not sure if this explained anything, if Levi understood what it meant, ‘there is no Vanguard.’

‘How do you,’ Eren cut Levi off by grabbing onto his arm and dragging him further south. Every so often they were cut off by a dead man, or woman, and every time Eren thought he saw a red tunic he dragged Levi out of sight.

It was in one of the homes that Levi pulled Eren’s hand away from his mouth. ‘What the fuck do you _mean_ there is no Vanguard?’

When Eren didn’t respond – couldn’t, the answer wasn’t important enough – Levi punched him in the jaw. He staggered backwards and glared, but it was Levi and Levi was alive, and fuck if the boy do anything in the world right now that Eren wouldn’t forgive.

‘The vanguard have rotations during these battles,’ Eren explained, ‘there was no retreat. They’re probably being attacked. If they’re being attacked then the Vanguard has probably been attacked, too.’

Levi glared at him, processed his words, cursed and his body agreed with the assessment. ‘That’s a really shitty name.’

‘Levi,’ Eren said.

The boy huffed, and looked away from his watch to Eren. ‘What?’

Eren answered him with a kiss, and then they both headed further south to the large boathouses, and nearly fell into the chasm that had been dug out and bricked up. ‘What the hell-‘

There was no proper cover, not here, not like there had been when Eren had been here three years ago. He cursed, didn’t bother to answer Levi, and started for another direction, pausing only to ensure that the younger man was following him.

They finally stopped on the eastern side, held up in what once was the home of a merchant, but had been raided and had housed the deaths of countless people since. The storm passed, and cleared, sun pouring down in streams in the light outside. ‘We’re letting them die,’ Levi told him, but made no move to leave their hiding place.

‘Thomas is dead,’ Eren said. ‘I can’t…’ he looked to Levi and hoped the younger man would understand, wouldn’t hold it against him that he couldn’t watch the only thing left that he cared for die, too. Whether today or tomorrow or a year from now. ‘We’re escaping.’

Levi wanted to argue; it hurt him, even. His brows pinched and he looked crazed for a moment with concern. But he settled. ‘Okay,’ he said, and Eren took that moment to kiss him again.

They waited there hours, and during that time half a dozen dead men wandered by. They killed them, or as close as they could, and threw their limbs and torsos and heads downstairs into the hole that once served as a basement.

They didn’t move because Levi was a dumbass and had lost more blood than he thought from the numerous slashes and cuts he had sustained, and Eren still had an arrow protruding from his forearm. He was dizzy, Levi was weak.

It was sunset when the chanced to remove the arrow from Eren’s arm. He cried out, weak and tired.

They said nothing the entire time, but Levi didn’t mind when Eren held him close, and Eren didn’t mind when Levi gripped him tight.

The door that barred them from the outside world; a once-upon table they had set against the opening was kicked away, and before Eren or Levi could stand an archer walked in, bow drawn and eyes sharp and steady.

Eren stood, had placed his body in front of Levi’s, had about three seconds before Levi circumnavigated Eren’s protection. Another archer walked in, and Eren grabbed Levi’s arm to stop him from attacking because neither tribesman had fired yet.

One told them to surrender, and Eren was glad he knew the word.

‘Drop them,’ Eren said. ‘ _Levi_ ,’ he clarified.

‘Are you fucking with me right now?’

‘They want us to surrender.’

Levi glared; was so terrifying that one of the tribesmen tightened the drawstring of their bow. ‘Levi,’ Eren ordered, and the younger man complied as Eren complied, and they were kicked out onto the street with their hands held up in surrender.

They were _fucked_.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think you guys understand how upset I am that I killed Thomas, but, as you might know, you're supposed to 'kill your darlings'. So there. Darling dead. Next chapter: The Tribe


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